mm 
mm 

m 



THE GRAVER THOUGHT 



OF A 



COUNTRY PARSON. 




BY THE AUTHOR OP 



'THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON." 



Second Series. 




BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1873- 



author's edition. 



*<* Transfer 



University Press: 
Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 
Camdr idgf. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 



. Praying Everywhere i 

II. The Discipline of Sorrow . . . . 18 

III. He must increase; but I must decrease . 36 

IV. Grieving the Holy Spirit .... 54 
V. Intolerance 72 

VI. Needless Fears 91 

VII. No Temple in Heaven 109 

VIII. All Saints 127 

IX. Work . 146 

X. Intercessory Prayer . . * . 164 
XI. Christian Consolation under Bereavement 

by Death 182 

XII. The First Prayer in Solomon's Temple . 201 

XIII. The Expectancy of Creation . . .221 

XIV. Living to One's Self . . . . . 237 
XV. The Coming Night 256 

XVI. Doctrine and Practice . . . . 275 

XVII. Patience 293 

XVIII. St. Paul's closing Retrospect and Prospect 313 



I. 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 

"I will therefore that men pray everywhere." — 1 Tim. ii. 8. 

HERE is something touching, and something 
striking, in the thought, How naturally hu- 
man beings, in times of deep feeling and of 
great extremity, whether of evil or good, are im- 
pelled-fesp-- something within them to turn to God: — 
le words of prayer. In imminent danger, 
iuman help is vain, we involuntarily feel that 
the only thing. In crushing sorrow, when 
some stioKe has fallen that seems too heavy to bear, 
what can man do but fall upon his knees and pray? 
Through long anxiety, in great perplexity, you know 
who have , known these, how often you have felt im- 
pelled to look away from all the dreary scene about 
you, and to look up to Him who, if He would, could so 
easily take it all away. And when some great happi- 
ness and blessing has come, — something much wished 
and little hoped, — something that is like a gleam of 
sunshine in a lot whose usual light has been equably 




2 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



overcast and clouded, — what human being that feels 
aright, but knows how natural it is that tears of grati- 
tude should fill the eyes, and that you should turn with 
a full heart to God and thank Him ! If we have the 
root of the matter in any good degree in us : if we be 
Christian men and women with even a little of the bet- 
ter life ; — then we know that our deepest feelings ever 
lead us to God. The feeling that cannot be uttered 
otherwise, is naturally uttered in prayer to God. 
When our heart is too full, or too heavy, or too joyful, 
to let us speak fitly to a fellow-creature, we can always 
speak to Him ! In the average daylight of our life, 
when things go in a commonplace way, we may be able 
to pass hours without any direct thought of God, and 
turning to Him. But in every extremity, whether of 
good or ill : in every case where we are disturbed from 
our common way : when things grow serious : when a 
strain is put upon us : when a change seems to be pass- 
ing over everything: when there is sickness in the 
house, when there is death: when there is joy in the 
house, and thankfulness : then, brethren, surely you 
know it, you think of God, and you turn to God. You 
take away your overcharged heart from the presence of 
your fellow-mortals : you get away from that constraint : 
you enter into your closet, and shut the door : and you 
tell out what you feel to the One who thoroughly under- 
stands you ! 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



3 



You will perhaps think, my friends, that St. Paul has 
his will ; and that Christian men and women, if they 
be praying people at all, do indeed " pray everywhere.'' 
Many times in the day, and in many places, you look up 
for a moment from the midst of work and worry ; and 
the brief word of ejaculatory prayer flies with its mes- 
sage to the willing ear of God. Perhaps there is often- 
times more heart and reality in these short petitions, in- 
tercalated in the intervals of your work, than there is 
in your longer and more formal prayers. For in these 
short petitions, you are going to God not because you 
think you ought, but because you feel you must: be- 
cause the sense of weakness and want and sinfulness 
and helplessness rushes over you : and to whom can you 
go but to Him? 

In thinking of this text, on which our meditation at 
this time is to be founded, I purpose to turn away en- 
tirely from the little niceties and difficulties of criticism, 
with which it has been surrounded by people who had 
more time for that kind of thing than we have : and to 
take the text in its broad and solemn sense, as suggest- 

' DO 

ing the duty and privilege of keeping and cultivating a 
praying spirit : of keeping our hearts so that we shall 
be always and in all places ready to turn to God in 
prayer: of living (so far as may be) in that atmos- 
phere. We do not need now to be told, as the Jews 
needed, that there is no favored place, where prayer to 



4 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



God is more acceptable and effectual than it is else- 
where : we know that not the spot, if you could be sure 
of it, where our Redeemer died for us upon the Cross, 
— not the spot where He knelt in Gethsemane, gaining 
our salvation by His agony, — is a better place for pray- 
ing, than is the bedside by which your little children 
kneel morning and evening, — than is the quiet place 
where you are wont to pray, — than is the space com- 
passed by these walls, where I trust we have all some- 
times been well assured of our Saviour's presence, ac- 
cording to His word. Wheresoever you heartily draw 
near to God, the promise is that He will draw near to 
you. Wherever two or three are gathered together: 
wherever the solitary suppliant, in spirit and truth does 
but utter the " God be merciful to me a sinner " : is the 
place of acceptable prayer. The poor woman of Sy- 
char had grown up in the belief, that according to the 
Jewish law, " Jerusalem was the place where men ought 
to worship." But we know better than that. " God is 
a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth " : that is the charter under 
which the Church of Christ offers its prayers. And 
though the wide, broad principle breathes from the 
whole New Testament, and needs not to be founded 
upon single texts ; still it is cheering to remember, as 
we lift up our heart for a moment as we walk the street, 
as we cover the face for a moment in the crowd of men, 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



5 



as we hastily ask for guidance in some little perplexity 
that has arisen in our worldly business, that the great 
Apostle of the Gentiles said, speaking with his Master's 
authority and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, " I 
will therefore that men pray everywhere!" 

Come then, brethren, and let us for a little while think 
of this duty and privilege, of keeping a praying spirit. 
And may the Holy Ghost, Blessed Spirit of All-prayer, 
teach us to think rightly. I never would sit down at 
home to begin or to carry on a sermon to be preached 
to you, without a moment's prayer for His guidance : 
so now let us each, in silence, ask for His presence and 
blessing. If we ask them, we shall get them. There 
is nothing promised more plainly than that. 

My friends, no day ought to pass over us on which 
we should be content with the mere morning and even- 
ing prayer. We should most carefully avoid getting 
into the way of feeling, when the prayer is ended with 
which we begin the day, " There, now that duty is done 
with for the present." Let us not think obscurely, as 
we are prone to do, that now our prayer is over, and we 
must go forth to our common work, we do in fact go out 
from God's presence : leave all that behind for the time : 
and stay out of God's presence till the evening, when we 
shall come back into it for a few minutes again before 
we go to rest. The Christian who comes to think and 



6 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



feel in that way, is sadly abridging his privilege as a 
child of God : he is not taking half the comfort that he 
might. Brethren, we are not like children that must go 
out from our Father's house in the morning, to spend 
the working-day away from Him, and only to come back 
to Him at evening. Xo : we are with Him, and He with 
us, all the day through. We never leave His presence : 
He is beside us through all our work, our weariness, our 
perplexity, our worry, all the day. And we may tell 
Him what we want, and how we are feeling, not stiffly 
and formally twice a day, at morning and evening : but 
as often as we please. He will not weary of listening 
to us, if we do not weary of speaking to Him. We 
need not limit ourselves to morning and evening prayer ! 
Twenty times, — and far more than that, — as you go 
through your day's work, the eye may look up for a 
moment, the heart may be lifted up : the brief word may 
carry up to God's ear the story of your need, and of 
your trust in Him ! Sitting down at your desk, and 
taking up your pen, — if that be your work, — O you 
do not know how much better you may do it, for just 
covering your eyes with your hand for a minute, and 
asking God's blessing in prayer. Or dealing with your 
fellow-men, some of them impracticable and wrong-head- 
ed enough, some of them sharp-set and low-principled 
enough, some of them provoking and stupid enough, — 
how much better you will keep your temper amid the 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



7 



provocations of business, — with how much clearer head 
and kinder heart you will treat with your fellow-sinners, 
— for a word of silent prayer ! If you desire to influence 
any one for good, remember how wisely it has been said, 
that the shortest road to any human heart is round by 
God: and explain to your Heavenly Father all you 
wish to do. Every little pain will be better borne ; and 
every little joy enhanced ; by a moment's silent mention 
of them to God. You can, alone with Him, speak of a 
host of little things, which really make a great part in 
your thoughts and in your life, — yet which are less 
suitable for speaking of in united prayer with other 
people. The good minister in Ayrshire long ago, who 
astonished his people by praying in church that his lame 
horse might get well, so that he might the more effi- 
ciently fulfil his pastoral work by that faithful creature's 
help ; had better have kept that petition for his closet 
when only God could hear him ; and might most fitly 
and properly have presented that petition there. For 
God cares for oxen : and watches the fall of a sparrow : 
there is nothing too little for His notice ; and if a thing 
be great enough to vex our heart, to lie on it like a dead 
weight, as a very small inconvenience may quite well 
do, — then it is great enough to tell Him who knows 
what poor weak creatures we are, and who feels for us 
in all we feel. Going forth, and coming in, — a mo- 
ment will be sufficient, — let there be a quiet moment 



8 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



of silent prayer. Let all you do be begun, continued, 
and ended with prayer. There need be no parade of 
it; yet let it be there. It will be enough that God 
should know. I remember well how fit and becoming a 
thing it seemed, when in another country, hundreds of 
miles away, I saw an aged clergyman, who was a fel- 
low-traveller, as the railway-train started on a journey 
that was to occupy a long day, just for a minute, simply 
and unaffectedly, uncover his head in silent prayer. 
There was no pretension, but there was no concealment : 
it did one good to see it : and you could not but think 
of the solemn counsel of the great Apostle, " I will that 
men pray everywhere ! " Yes, prayer is not a thing to 
be done for the day at once, and then to be glad that it 
is over : it is a thing to last all through. There need be 
no formal words : there need not be a movement that 
would show the stranger where the thoughts had turned. 
It is but the silent turning of the soul to the great Fa- 
ther above us : just the reaching of the poor weak wan- 
derer, in his dependence and sinfulness, after the great „ 
Source of all strength, all good and blessing. 

Now, Christian friends, do you avail yourselves as 
you ought and might, of this great privilege ? It is not 
as if the gates of heaven were opened for a few min- 
utes morning and evening to admit our supplications : 
No, they stand open all day long. The mail is always 
going out, that can carry your message up to the Golden 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



9 



City ! Perhaps, in some measure, we do avail ourselves 
of all this. But O, we might make far more of it. 
And how peaceful, how amiable and kind, how forgiv 
ing, how holy and happy, what pleasant people we 
should be to live with and to deal with, if we lived with 
this prayerful spirit, in this atmosphere of God's pres- 
ence and of communion with God ! There is not a fault 
about us that this would not mend. There is not a good 
thing about us that this would not foster. It is an un- 
speakable privilege. We do not half value it, nor half 
use it. There is often a great significance in single 
words : and this is so, truly, in the name of Ejaculatory 
Prayer: the name which means the brief, broken, mo- 
mentary petition, sent up in little spaces coming amid 
other things. You know what that highly figurative 
word means. It means that our soul is like a bow bent, 
ready to launch away the arrow of the short heavenward 
sentence. Would that our hearts were always so ! Al- 
ways ready to recognize God's hand in everything : al- 
ways ready to think of God, and to turn to God : to has- 
ten to Him with every little concern : " in everything," 
as St. Paul says, " by prayer, to make our wants known 
to God." And then, my friends, wherever we are, will 
be as a holy temple : wherever we are, God will be of- 
tentimes " drawing near " : The Lord' will be in that 
place, though others know it not : because we shall have 
learnt, by the teaching of that most tenderly sympathiz- 



10 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



ing of all friends, the Blessed Holy Spirit, to do as St. 
Paul would have us, — even to "pray everywhere ! " 

And now, passing from this, let me suggest to you an- 
other thought, arising out of this advice of the Apostle 
Paul. 

It is this : what a hint this text gives us, Christian 
friends, of the kind of temper and spirit in which we 
ought to be going on through life ! St. Paul would wish 
us to be praying everywhere : to be living in a praying 
atmosphere. Now see how much this includes and ex- 
cludes. It includes a complete sketch of what our char- 
acter and life should be. It utterly excludes all bitter, 
angry, and revengeful feeling. No angry person can 
pray. No envious, jealous, malignant person can pray. 
No person, carefully considering how he is to vex and 
annoy a fellow-creature, can pray. No man, thinking and 
scheming how to overreach his neighbor, can pray. No 
person filled with uncharitable suspicion, and eager to 
put the worst construction upon a neighbor's conduct can 
pray. No person making a malignant speech, or writ- 
ing a wicked and false attack upon a brother, can pray. 
Coming to God in prayer, we must come with a qui- 
etude and kindliness of spirit, which would make this 
world a better place if it were commoner than it is. 
Yet if we are to be praying everywhere, that quietude 
and kindliness must be the pervading temper of our 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



11 



hearts. We must cast out all bitterness, wrath, and 
malice : we must cultivate that charity which is the chief 
of Christian graces, and the fulfilling of all God's Law. 
Most people will feel as if that somewhat ill-natured 
gossip which forms so considerable a part of the conver- 
sation of society, were not very consistent with the low- 
liness, the penitence, the charity, of earnest Christian 
prayer. You cannot well rise from your knees, where 
you have been praying that God would remit your debt 
of ten thousand talents : and go straight and take a poor 
fellow-sinner by the throat, who owes you a hundred 
pence. Every one must feel, that it was not a mere ar- 
bitrary command, but a thing which has its reason in the 
very nature of things, our Saviour's direction : " And 
when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against 
any : that your Father also in heaven may forgive your 
trespasses." You feel and know, that when you go to 
your closet that you may pray to God, you cannot pray 
with any heart or sincerity, if there be some bitter, an- 
gry, unworthy feeling gnawing away within you: dis- 
tracting your thoughts from what you desire to say, and 
quenching devout feeling as water quenches fire. You 
must cast out that evil feeling before you can even be- 
gin heartily to pray : before you can feel that holy and 
trustful glow of child-like converse with your Saviour, 
which makes the lowly believer understand what is 
meant by worshipping in spirit and truth ; and which 



12 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



he very humbly yet quite unhesitatingly attributes to 
the operation of the Holy Spirit. O brethren, bend- 
ing at God's footstool, let it be with a lowly heart, with 
a quiet spirit, with a soul free from any feeling but that 
of good-will and charity towards our poor sinful anxious 
brothers in humanity ! And how the little offences and 
injuries and unkind sayings of ordinary life and society, 
will pass away from the soul that is praying everywhere ; 
as the drops of water pass traceless from the water-fowl's 
wings ! There will be an armor about that soul, that 
will turn harmlessly aside the little darts and arrows 
that penetrate the moral nature of other men, and stick 
in it, with such irritating and humbling effect. 

But thinking of all this, many of you will call to 
mind the beautiful words of one who was the Shake- 
speare of theological writers ; the great and good Jere- 
my Taylor. "Anger," says he, "is a short madness, 
and an eternal enemy to discourse and a fair conversa- 
tion : it is a fever in the heart, and a calenture in the 
head, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over : 
and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposi- 
tion to pray. For prayer is the peace of our spirits, 
the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollec- 
tion, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest ; 
prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled 
thoughts : it is the daughter of charity and the sister 
of meekness : and he that prays to God with an angry. 



PEAYING EVERYWHERE. 



13 



that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like 
him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up 
his closet in the out-quarters of an army, and chooses 
a frontier garrison to be wise in. For so have I seen a 
lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, 
and singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and 
rise above the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten 
back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, till the 
little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay 
till the storm was over : and then it made a prosperous 
flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music 
and motion from an angel ! " How true and beautiful 
all that is, my friends ! And it may well serve to show 
you, in better words than any which could be found by 
me, how much more than meets the eye, or than is sug- 
gested by the first thought, is meant when St. Paul tells 
us that he would that we should pray everywhere, — 
keep always within us the praying spirit. O what kind- 
liness, what charity, what mutual help, what sympathy 
in other's trials, what meekness and quietness of spirit, 
what an array of all beautiful Christian grace, what a 
rich harvest of the fruits of the Blessed Spirit, are im- 
plied in that one thing ! Everything will be right, if 
that be there ! For prayer is the very breath of the 
Christian life : if it be there, there must be living faith, 
and true penitence, and deep humility, and unfailing 
love: the soul must be indeed united to Christ, and 



14 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



dwelt in by the Holy Spirit. Yes, my friends : if you 
know any one very dear to you, whose welfare you care 
for as your own : one to whom you desire to say your 
very kindest, and to wish your very best : one for whom 
you desire a happy passage through life, far happier 
than yours has been : one for whom you desire a peace- 
ful, yea, triumphant death, and a glorious immortality : 
then, believe me, you may say to such a one, — to your 
little child who you hope will be a good and happy man 
after you are in your grave, — you may express to 
such a one the very best and kindest wish that ever 
was uttered by mortal lips, as you go back to the old 
words of the great Apostle ; and say, with the solem- 
nity that befits them, " I wish that you may pray every- 
where ! " 

I have not thought it needful to occupy our little time 
with any formal definition of prayer. I take for 
granted that you all know, — that you all live in the 
daily use of it : just as when we look at a living man, 
we do not think of asking whether or not he breathes 
the atmosjDhere. TTe know he could not be living if he 
did not do that: and constant prayer is just as needful 
to the keeping up of the soul's better life. Yet let me 
remind you in a word, that all prayer must be offered in 
simple reliance on the sacrifice and intercession of our 
Redeemer: The u For Christ's sake" is not to be hur- 
ried over as a mere formal thing : the truth and the feel- 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



15 



ing it implies is of the very essence of our prayer. To 
go to God, and ask for what we want, is not Christian 
prayer. It is Christian prayer to do this in the name 
of Christ. Then, remember, too, that in all prayer you 
must wait and look for the help of the Holy Spirit : you 
cannot pray by yourself. You cannot think of the things 
you need : you cannot get up the spirit in which to go to 
God. Then further, remember that confession of sin, 
and the lowly sense of our unworthiness which finds its 
utterance in confession, is of the essence of prayer. 
The mere words of confession need not necessarily be 
present in every brief act of devotion : but the lowly 
spirit of confession must be always there. And grati- 
tude too : and its utterance in thanksgiving ; may be 
commended in just the same words. As for the special 
petitions you should offer, I am not careful to speak par- 
ticularly. Some good people, I think quite unnecessa- 
rily, have a great many directions to give as to the 
things for which you ought to pray. I would say, in a 
word, Pray for what you really want. Tell God what 
it is you are really desiring. You may ask for things 
which God may see meet to deny ; but you will not ask 
for anything which it is wrong for you to ask ; if you 
have heartily sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 
And under that guidance you will assuredly be led to 
pray chiefly for the best and most valuable things : for 
those great gifts of pardon, holiness, peace with God, a 



1G 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



sure part in Christ, which will never fail you. These 
are not fanciful things : they are the most real and solid 
of all: the most so now, if we had faith to discern 
aright : the only things, by this day a hundred years ! 
And praying earnestly, through Christ and by the Holy 
Ghost, it will not matter where or how you pray. 
Kneeling or standing, sitting as King David did, or 
lying prostrate like Elijah, it matters not a sand-grain 
which ; only let your prayer go through Christ ; and let 
it be sincere. Under the gray cathedral's noble roof, 
and amid its solemn light, following the track of a ven- 
erable liturgy : or in a simpler church, with less for 
mere sense and taste, the silent hearts of the worship- 
pers seeking to keep pace with the words of him who 
offers prayer in the name of all : it matters not a sand- 
grain which ; so your prayer go up through Christ, and 
so it be sincere. Little do they know of the spirituality 
of true Christian worship, who fancy that it is confined 
to any place, any time, any way. As for postures and 
modes, we can find examples of all in Holy Scripture. 
As for time, we have morning, evening, and at all times. 
And as for place, you can hardly desire anything wider 
than that for which we have the Apostolic warrant : " ] 
will that men pray everywhere ! " 

And thus, Christian friends, with the spirit of prayer 
always in our hearts, and with the words of prayer ready 
upon our lips, let us go on our pilgrimage way. In a 



PRAYING EVERYWHERE. 



17 



brief sentence, when we feel it is sufficient, sent up in a 
pause in work : in more orderly and lengthened supplica- 
tion, morning and evening : let our desires go up to God. 
There is no more efficacious means of getting what is re- 
ally good for us : none which will more surely bring the 
grace to do without that, which God shall see meet to 
deny. In every trouble and perplexity, let us have this 
resort to go to; whence we shall come back resigned 
and cheered. And in every joy let us remember who 
gave it ; and be sure we have not got the best good of 
it, till we have poured out our grateful hearts to Him. 
O brethren, think, that we are allowed freely to go to Him 
who orders everything, — who has all things in his hand : 
and to tell Him all we need, — all we feel and fear! 
Would that we could understand to what a privilege we 
are invited, every time it is said to us, " Let us pray ! " 
Let us live, my friends ; let us work and wait and suffer ; 
in the full exercise of that great privilege, while we live : 
and let the last words upon our lips when we are dying, 
be words of prayer ! 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SOKKOW. 



" Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on 
his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath 
he gone into captivity : therefore his taste remained in him, and his 
scent is not changed." — Jer. xlviii. 11. 

FEW days since, I read a review of a book 
by an American author, the purpose of which 
book is to show that this creation never had 
any Creator, and that this universe goes on somehow 
by itself without any Providence to direct it. Vari- 
ous learned, able, wrong-headed, and bad-hearted men 
have, of late years, set out the like dismal doctrine: 
but probably there is no recent work (which educated 
people would be likely to read) which so plainly lays 
down the great atheistic principle, which so long ago as 
the Psalmist's days, fools who are now dead were accus- 
tomed to hold by, that " There is no God." But the 
thing which especially pressed itself on one's mind, sit- 
ting thinking of that book, was a feeling of wonder how 
he poor miserable wretch that wrote it, if he believes 




THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



19 



what is written in it, manages to live at all. In this 
world of care, and trouble, and death, no doubt he must 
have his sorrows, burdens, and bereavements : now, I 
wonder, where does he go for comfort under these? 
When his heart is overcharged and breaking, as all hu- 
man hearts must some day be, where does he go and 
pour out his heart, that miserable man who cannot pray ? 
And when taught by disappointment, by failure, by the 
death of those dearest, by the ever-felt insufficiency of 
all earthly possessions, that this life will not satisfy us, 
what can he do that believes there is no other life than 
this? My friends, if we are Christians at all; then, 
though our faith and grace be very far indeed from be- 
ing what we wish and pray, yet perhaps we do not al- 
ways realize how unspeakably dependent we are upon 
our religion ; how impossible it would be for us to do 
without it ; what a horrible blank it would make, how 
thoroughly we should break down beaten ; if it were not 
that we believe in a Fatherly God, and a Blessed Sav^ 
iour, and a sympathizing, comforting, strengthening Holy 
Spirit, and a happy heaven where sorrow and sin are 
done with, qnd where families and friends parted here 
by death meet forever ! Christian friends, how many 
times in every week do you fall back upon religion 
for support which you can find nowhere else : how many 
things do you habitually bear quietly and patiently, that 
would make you burst out into wild despair if you had 



20 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



not religion to turn to and there find support : yea, breth- 
ren, I am sure I speak the deepest feeling of every be- 
lieving heart, when I say that if you could prove our 
Christian faith a fable, we could not live : — we could 
bear this life no more ! 

And not the least among the sustaining and consoling 
truths to which we cling thus resolutely, is this great 
doctrine ; that if we be Christian people, — and may the 
Blessed Holy Spirit make us all and keep us all such, — 
then every step of our way is directed by God ; and di- 
rected in wisdom and love and will for our true well- 
being. Brethren, let us pray, God increase our faith to be- 
lieve that ! O what a difference it would make upon our 
daily life and the feeling of our hearts, — how much 
happier and quieter it would make us, — if we could 
only feel that sublime truth which it is so easy to say ! 
That there is a meaning in everything that happens to 
us ; in everything, small and great : that things turn out 
as they do, because God thinks it best for us : that the 
time when we failed so miserably of something on which 
we had set our heart, we did so because our kind Father 
above saw that we were poor ignorant foolish children, 
that did not know what was good for us, — that wanted 
to get hold of something that was really poison ; that 
wanted to turn into a pretty green path that would have 
led to a precipice ! If God would carry that truth home 
to our hearts, by the irresistible demonstration of the 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



21 



Blessed Spirit! Then how patiently, how cheerfully, 
how humbly, how hopefully, we should go along our 
path through life : how free our souls would be of the 
anxieties, forbodings, perplexities, fears, that weigh down 
many Christians now, and age them before their time ! 
For then we should know that our way was the right 
one, and that the day would come when we should see 
that which now we believe on God's sure word : and if 
the way grew dark, and rough, and thorny, we should 
only cling the closer to the kind Hand that was lead- 
ing on through all, — like children that in a dark path, 
afraid and yet not afraid, press nearer to their father 
and guide. 

My brethren, I trust it is the wish of each of us, that 
God's will be done, in us, and about us : I trust that it is 
our daily prayer, not so much that God would give us 
what we wish, as that He would teach us, simply and 
completely, to submit our will to His, and that He would 
give us grace and strength to bear whatever He may 
send. Let us seek that the utterance of our hearts may 
be that of the blind Galileo ; who said, " It has pleased 
God that it should be so ; and it must please me too." 
And yet, though all this be so, there can be no doubt 
that it is natural to us to wish, that it might please God 
to lead us by as easy and pleasant a way as may be : 
that it might please God to appoint us as peaceful and 
happy a life as possible, and to send us just as little evil 



22 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



and sorrow as may suffice to work upon us the whole- 
some results of. evil and sorrow. To live tranquilly 
year after year in the same home : to have none of those 
great shocks coming which leave their outward trace in 
features which even at their cheerfullest you see can 
very swiftly and readily take the look of alarm and 
fear : that death may keep away from the house : that 
bads news may come rarely, may come never: that 
cares and anxieties may be absent upon that wearing 
question, how to make the ends meet, which takes up so 
great a part of the thoughts of most men and women in 
a country like this : that you may be able to live in 
kindliness and esteem among your neighbors : that when 
you wish greatly for anything, you may get it : that 
your nerves may remain unshaken, and your spirits 
equable and cheerful : that your bodily strength and ac- 
tivity may hold out, — that heart and brain and hand 
and limb may remain equal to their duty : — these are 
the kind of things we all wish for : such is the life we 
should most of us lead, if it were given us to determine our 
own lot, and to fix the bounds of our habitation. And 
quite right too, that we should so feel and so wish. God 
has made us so, that we wish for what is pleasant, and 
shrink from what is painful. But it does not follow, 
that the thing we like best, is the best thing for us. And 
the text tells us that a life of unbroken ease, a life in 
which all goes well with us, is a most perilous thing. 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



23 



Let us look at the text, and think of its meaning. It 
is a piece of imagery ; and the comparison is a homely 
one ; but it brings out the truth in a way every one can 
understand. It speaks to us of the spiritual effects of an 
easy and undisturbed life. The kingdom of Moab had 
enjoyed long tranquillity, though there were troublesome 
neighbors near, and though it was a state of no great 
power: it had pleased God to order it so. "Moab had 
been at ease from his youth." Then comes the comparison 
to wine : Moab had not been subjected to captivity, nor to 
other changes and troubles which are to a nation what 
pouring from one vessel to another is to wine : thus he 
had remained standing upon the lees, losing no part of 
his original strength and flavor. The suggestion is, that 
Moab was not good to start with : and he had not been 
tried with processes which might indeed have been pain- 
ful, but in which he would have got rid of a good deal of 
the evil that was in him at the first. Moab had been 
secure in prosperity : and so he had remained the same 
as at the beginning, — all his bad qualities being only 
confirmed by time and use. 

You know there are other passages of Holy Scrip- 
ture which help us to the spiritual meaning of all this 
statement concerning Moab. Says the Psalmist, " Be- 
cause they have no changes, therefore they fear not 
God." And in the book of the prophet Zephaniah we 
read, " At that time, I will search Jerusalem with can- 



24 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



dies, and punish the men that are settled on their lees : 
that say in their heart, i The Lord will not do good, nei- 
ther will he do evil.' " Now the great lesson from all 
this is, that there is spiritual danger in the quiet lot, 
and in the quiet heart ; that it is not God's purpose that 
those He loves should enjoy entire worldly tranquillity : 
that there is something good for you and me, in care, 
unrest, disquiet, sorrow, bereavement, disappointment, 
perplexity, — in all that breaks up that perilous calm, 
in which we grow too well satisfied with this world, and 
in which we feel ourselves too little dependent on our 
Saviour and our Comforter ; and in which we come too 
much to feel as if things went on in their own way, for- 
getting that God directs them all ; and in which we fail 
to realize it, that the one thing needful is something quite 
different from worldly enjoyment or worldly gain. 

Is it not true, my friends : do you not know it from your 
own experience ; that things might go with us in this 
world so quietly and happily, — we might be so content 
with this life, so satisfied with things as they are, — that 
we might utterly forget the care of our souls, and of eter- 
nity, and of the world beyond the grave ? Ah, it would 
not do for us to be what Moab was, " at ease from our 
youth " to our age ! The great thing, after all, that will 
make us seek our rest, and the portion of our souls, else- 
where, must be our learning from actual trial, sanctified 
by God's spirit, that this is not our rest. It is only 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



25 



through being made to feel the want of something better 
than we can find here, that we are led heartily to turn to 
Christ, — and to make up our mind that our treasure 
must be above, and not below. If we found that our lot 
here would satisfy us, and fill the cravings of our soul : 
if no sorrow came near us, and no care : if the sense of sin 
never disquieted us : then we should forget that we are 
no more than strangers and pilgrims on the earth ; we 
should fancy that this was our home ! And so you see 
how uninterrupted worldly prosperity might prove the 
very greatest of all misfortune, by depriving us of heav- 
en. You cannot expect, in any ordinary case, to get the 
good part in Christ without seeking for it. O brethren, 
even as it is, you know we all set our hearts far too much 
on this world : we think far too much of worldly ends and 
advantages, and give far too much of our time and 
strength to these : but what would it be, if this world 
were all we wish it, — what would it be, if there came 
no troubles and sorrows, to wean us somewhat from 
it ? — and how thankful, with a lowly thankfulness, we 
ought to be, that God does not leave us, like Moab, 
at our ease ; that God never lets us go on long without 
sending something to remind us that we can never be 
evenly happy here ! There always comes some draw- 
back, some vexation, some worry ; and now and then a 
great crushing blow. And truly, brethren, we all get 
enough of that discipline, if we would but profit by it. 
2 



26 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



Almost every human being has enough of the teaching 
of disquiet and sorrow, if it were but sanctified: the 
temptation of too much peace comes to very few. Per- 
haps if you knew more of the lot of those whose lot 
seems most enviable and most peaceful, you would see 
that they are no more to be envied than yourself. We 
have all, perhaps, some time passed by some sweet rural 
dwelling, embosomed with trees and bright with flow- 
ers ; and thought how quiet and pure and happy life 
might be in a home so sweet : but when we came to 
know the inner history of the family that dwelt there, 
we found that God had not tempted them with Moab'3 
temptation : we learned that sorrow and care and anxi- 
ety may quite well live in graceful dwellings grown 
over with honeysuckle and jasmine, and that very sad 
eyes may look forth from windows round which roses 
twine. And where the fretting daily worry is kept 
away, and something like Moab's temptation of peace 
and quiet is suffered for a while, we all know how often 
the sudden heavy blow comes, and shatters the frail foun- 
dation of that ease. Many of you remember how the 
biographer tells us of " the almost awful happiness" of 
a certain great and good man's home: but you remem- 
ber, too, how suddenly that state of temptation to that 
household ceased ; how from the midst of love and hon- 
or and usefulness and abundant promise, the messenger, 
coming without any shadow of his approach, called that 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



27 



good man away. My dear friends, if God loves us, He 
will not suffer us to be at ease, too much, or too long. 
The little fretting vexation will be always there. Or, 
if there be none such, the heavy blow will fall in its 
time. 

And so you see, dear friends, how in love and mercy, 
and tender consideration for our best good, our Father 
sends us trouble. It is perilous to be at ease : it may be 
our ruin to be at ease : and so God takes care that we 
shall not be so. Brethren, might we but rightly feel 
this, how it would clear up God's dealings: and espe- 
cially, when each of us looks back upon his own life, 
and thinks how much trouble and toil and weariness 
and disappointment and sorrow have been in it, — how 
different life has proved from what we anticipated and 
hoped when we were little children or hopeful youths, 
— how this explains all, and resigns and reconciles us 
to all ! Philosophers vex and bewilder themselves in 
trying to explain how there is such a thing as evil in 
this world : we do not pretend to understand that, but 
one thing we do know perfectly, we know why evil and 
sorrow have been sent into our own lot and heart. They 
have come, to make sure that we shall not "settle on 
our lees " : they have come, to keep this world from en- 
grossing our affection : they have come, to wean us from 
this world by making us feel its bitterness : they have 
come to teach us the grand, all-comprehending lesson, 



28 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



that if we want what will satisfy our souls, we must go 
to Christ and find it there. No doubt, brethren, a very 
great deal of sorrow and trouble have been sent to teach 
us this : but you know, if you wish to teach a difficult 
lesson, and to get it thoroughly accepted by a reluctant 
person that would rather not learn it, you must use a 
great deal of repetition : it will not do to tell a little boy 
whom you are teaching his alphabet the names of the 
letters just once : and even so, when God would drill 
into our unwilling minds that which is the very alpha- 
bet of all religion, he repeats the lesson a hundred and 
a thousand times : with all the sorrow He has sent us, 
He has not sent us more than enough : every trouble 
that ever touched or ever wrung our heart in all our 
life, was needed : for there is not one of us that will dare 
to say that he has set his heart too much on heavenly 
things ; that he has made too decided a choice of the 
Saviour as his only satisfying portion ; that he is seek- 
ing too constantly for the Blessed Spirit's indwelling, 
and holiness and peace ; and that he is too anxious that 
he and all he loves, when this troublesome life is past, 
and this sorrowful and sinful world has faded from view, 
may be gathered all together in that Golden City, where 
the soul shall be content at last ! 

Yes, brethren, it is not good for us in this world to be 
evenly at peace : and thus sorrow is God's discipline, 
and disappointment, and bereavement, — in short, every- 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



29 



thing that is painful and disquieting, — all being sancti- 
fied by the Holy Spirit of God. And here is a truth 
we cannot remember too seriously. In all our troubles, 
we cannot too earnestly and constantly pray for the 
presence and influence of the Holy Ghost. For sorrow 
does not necessarily sanctify : it is just as likely to sour, 
if left to its natural tendencies. Although Moab, or any 
one else, had not been at his ease a day in all his life : 
although he had been the most unquiet, restless, miser- 
able, disappointed creature the sun ever looked down 
upon ; it does not follow of necessity that he would have 
been a whit better than he was, after all his ease. Ah, 
there are men and women who are not " left on their 
lees " : who are cast about from place to place : who have 
no settled home : who are disappointed and mortified in 
their hopes and plans and affections : in whom the shoots 
of self-conceit and ambition and worldliness are pruned, 
as it were, with a keen knife and an unsparing hand : 
and yet who are just as far from being weaned from this 
world as ever Moab was, and just as far from seeking to 
have their portion in Christ : who hold by the world and 
by sin, though it is very little they have to hold by, as 
tightly as though they had lived at ease all their life ! 
Yes, Lazarus at the gate full of sores, might, for all that, 
have been just as unweaned from time and sense as the 
rich man clad in purple at his sumptuous fare. There 
are two things, to either of which sorrow may bring us : 



80 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



,it may bring us to good, or it may bring us to harm. It 
may make us fall down, like Job, and say, " The Lord 
gave, the Lord hath taken away, Blessed be the name 
of the Lord " : or it may make us " Curse God and die ! " 
Yes, you may have known those in whom sanctified sor- 
row and disappointment and bereavement, had wrought 
a resignation, a humility, a sympathy, a quietness, a 
kindliness, a sweetness of nature, that stamped them but 
a very little lower than what we fancy the angels are. 
And again, you may have known those in whom the 
like sorrow and disappointment and bereavement, had 
served only to sour and embitter : to fill with rebellious 
thoughts of God, and with envy and hatred towards 
men: to develop something of the nature of the devil 
himself. O brethren, in your troubles, and in the pros- 
pect of more, see that you pray most earnestly for the 
influence and guidance and consolation of the Blessed 
Spirit of God ! For trouble and disappointment are 
terrible things : they can work us such awful mischief 
if they are not made by Him to do us unspeakable good. 
If they are not touched by the Holy Ghost into most 
precious means of grace, they may be used by the Great 
Adversary to assure our eternal ruin ! 

My friends, you who have known many trials : you 
who have watched by the dying bed, and bent over the 
grave : you who set your heart on things which God 
eaid were never to be : you whose sensitive nature 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW, 



31 



makes the little worries of daily life sit very heavily on 
you, and whose quick heart and fancy eat the enjoyment 
out of your life by suggesting a hundred anxieties and 
fears : let me ask, Have all these things been sanctified 
to wean you from this world, and make you feel that 
four portion must be in Christ and seek it there : or do 
you still cling to the earth, and refuse to profit by your 
heavenly Father's teaching through all these trials and 
cares ? Every grief that these hearts have ever known, 
was a sharp lesson given by the best Teacher : and was 
meant to show us that this world will not do ; and that 
if we want peace and rest for our souls, we must look for 
them in our Saviour. Now, do you accept that lesson, 
heartily ? Or do you hold by the idea that this world 
would do if you could only get all you want ; — and try 
again to find your rest and portion here ? It is as sad a 
sight as can be found under heaven, a man who, after 
making a poor thing, an anxious, fearful, miserable thing, 
of this life, is going or to make a worse of the life be- 
yond the grave : a man whom the Spirit has pruned 
severely, has never " left at his ease," yet who is not a 
whit the better for it all ; a man whom worldly disap- 
pointment, instead of making heavenly-minded, has only 
made bitter of heart ; and who is as self-seeking, as self- 
conceited, as worldly, as impatient, as rebellious, as if 
the Holy Ghost had not been trying, by years of painful 
discipline, to take these evil things away! We could 



32 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



bear the sight and the suffering of any amount of sor- 
row, if we knew it was to result in great good : but O, 
to think that the misery of long years on earth may all 
go for nothing ; — may do no good at all ! 

Then if you would not have it so with yourself, pray 
earnestly in every trouble that the Holy Spirit may 
sanctify it ! Unless He do that, there is no reckoning 
the harm it may do ! 

I know quite well, that it is a hard lesson that care 
and sorrow teach us : the lesson that this is not our rest. 
It seems a sad thing to make up our mind that we can 
get no more here. It is very well for people, in worldly 
health and comfort, to tell some poor sufferer, with mis- 
erable days and sleepless nights, that all this is so : there 
is no easier commonplace ; nothing more readily said by 
people who have not the least sense of the meaning of 
what they say. But 0, it is a different thing, to hear it 
said that sanctified affliction is one of God's best bless- 
ings, by one just passing away from this life after months 
of almost ceaseless pain ; by one who is speaking from 
his own personal experience ! This is one of those 
truths which never impress us so deeply, as when feebly 
yet resolutely spoken from a dying bed, by lips soon to 
speak no more. And even when it is not told us in the 
supreme solemnity of ebbing life, there is that which 
cheers and. soothes us in hearing it said by those who 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



33 



speak because they know. And how many know ! Let 
us trust that very many in this congregation know. Let 
us trust that all of us, — since all beyond the very 
youngest must have known much care and sorrow, — 
are able sincerely to say that the affliction God sent us, 
He sent in love ; — that we know that, because it has 
done us so much good : and that, if it has left us with 
the lined face, the subdued step, the heart that will 
never again cherish very strongly any earthly wish or 
hope ; it has brought for these things abundant recom- 
pense, in the humility, the sympathy, the charity, the 
tender consideration for the feelings of others, the affec- 
tion set above, the will resigned to God's, the simple 
trust in Him, the readiness to go where He leads, and 
do what He commands, which perhaps never come to 
any human heart, except by the discipline of sanctified 
care and sorrow ! 

I do not wish to set out a one-sided view of this mat- 
ter : and remembering God's promise that " all things 
shall work together for good " to Christian people, I will 
confess willingly, that if sorrow be a precious discipline, 
happiness is often a precious discipline too. If there be 
those among us who can testify that it would not have 
done for them to have been allowed to be " at ease from 
their youth," for then they might have settled into utter 
worldliness and forgetfulness of God : there are perhaps 
others who can say that nothing did ever so draw them 
2* c 



34 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



to God, nothing did ever so bring them to their knees in 
penitence and thankfulness, as some great blessing or de- 
liverance vouchsafed after long anxiety and sorrow ; — 
some hopeful brightening of the horizon, after many 
gloomy days. I believe, firmly, that, as many people 
would be happier if they were better, so many people 
would be better if they were happier. For " the good- 
ness of God leadeth to repentance " : and doubtless we 
should all be very thankful if God would draw us to 
Himself in that pleasant way. Yet if we are truly His, 
be sure He will not allow us to find this world too pleas- 
ant, or to love it too well. "When He sees us getting 
too contented, He will send us something to correct that : 
if not a great sorrow, then some little wearying never- 
ceasing vexation, — which is just as effectual to teach 
that this is not our rest or home. 

And thus, my friends, I have sought to explain God's 
discipline of sorrow : why sorrow comes to God's people 
when God knows they cannot like it; and what it is 
meant to do. It is a sad teacher, which none of us 
would wish to learn from if we could avoid it : we need 
not pretend anything other a Yet St. Paul could " glory 
in tribulation," when he thought of all the good it could 
do : he could " most gladly glory in his infirmities, that 
the power of Christ might rest upon him " through them 
all. And we, my friends, this day, have known sorrow 
too bitterly in the past, to wish for it any more. If it 



THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 



35 



be possible for God to work His will in us without that, 
O, may it please Him not to send it again ! But if He 
see good to send it ; — and if the weary feet have more 
rough ways to tread, and the weary heart more pangs to 
bear ; — O may He sanctify it to us by the grace of 
His Holy Spirit ! And, being so sanctified, it will all 
go to fit us for the place, towards which every right step 
taken on this earth is tending ; and where all right 
hearts shall be at one at last. 



III. 



HE MUST INCREASE; BUT I MUST 
DECREASE. 

' He must increase ; but I must decrease." — St. John, iii. 30. 



T^^^yHERE are little single things which men say 
Sfi4|||fl and do, which give us a thorough insight into 



their character ; and which enable us to con- 
struct a complete theory of what their nature is. And 
a thoughtful observer forms his estimate of those around 
him, often from remarking very little things : not so 
much by observing what men and women do when they 
are put on the alert, and think people are watching 
them, as by observing their little sayings and doings 
when they are quite at their ease. 

Now in that short sentence which forms my text, and 
which contains a few words spoken by St. John the Bap- 
tist on a memorable occasion, and at a testing juncture 
in his life, we have something which gives us a deep in- 
sight into his nature, and which makes us know what 
manner of man he was. There is that in this short sen- 
tence, that shows us how fit he was to be our blessed 



INCREASE AND DECREASE. 



37 



Saviour's forerunner : that shows us what a noble-hearted, 
generous, great man the Baptist was ; and how superior 
he was to a certain unworthy littleness, from which many 
good and worthy men are oftentimes not at all free. 
There was a day on which his disciples came to him, 
and, with something of natural concern for their mas- 
ter's waning popularity and influence, told him that 
Christ was supplanting him, was taking the wind out 
of his sails : was baptizing, and all men were flocking to 
see and hear him. These disciples of John the Baptist 
did not like that their master, after filling the first place, 
should sink into the second : and with some perplexity, 
and grief, and disappointment, they came and made their 
moan. There was something in the whole state of mat- 
ters to which they found it very hard to make up their 
mind. 

We all know that the very best of ordinary Christian 
people have a great deal of their feeling. There are 
worthy men who wish good to be done, souls to be saved, 
sad hearts comforted, Christ's kingdom furthered ; — but 
all this to be done by themselves : who cherish a feeling 
they would hardly acknowledge to themselves, but which 
really comes to this, that they would rather the good 
were not done, if they themselves, or their church or 
sect, are not allowed to be the instruments of doing it : 
and who cannot, without much pain, find themselves sur- 
passed, find that others are drawing ahead of them, — 



38 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



even in the matters of Christian usefulness, and vigor, 
and success. Of course, even divine grace leaves hu- 
man nature, though regenerated and sanctified, yet in 
its essence just poor human nature : and it is not in 
common human nature, unless wonderfully helped from 
above, to be pleased when you find yourself worsted, 
beaten, set aside ; and others preferred before you. The 
very best Christian minister cannot like it, when his 
church begins to get empty: the worthiest Christian 
man cannot but feel it a trial, when something comes 
to remind him of flagging powers and failing strength. 

But all this, though very natural, is somewhat little ; 
and there was no such littleness in the Baptist's noble 
heart. He listened to what his perplexed disciples told 
him : he bade them understand that this was just what 
he looked for, just what was right. "I have had my 
little day, and my light is paling before the rising sun 
of another," many a man would sadly enough have 
said, with a mournful resignation to what could not be 
helped : not so St. John the Baptist. As for him, he 
rejoiced that he was to give way to one who was wor- 
thier. He was content to be like the cheap fir, under 
whose shelter the young oak roots itself ; and which in 
a little while is cut down, and gives place to the nobler 
tree. He was well content to be, not the bridegroom 
but the bridegroom's friend ; not the Christ, but he that 
was sent before Him. And all this without a murmur. 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



39 



The words are strange : where many a human being 
would have said, " My mortification is complete," he 
says, "My joy is fulfilled!" He says, with all his 
heart, what many a good man would have said a little 
grudgingly of even the worthiest competitor, " He must 
increase ; but I must decrease ! " 

But I do not invite you to-day to a study of the char- 
acter of St. John the Baptist, interesting as that might 
be to many of us : for in the character of a good Chris- 
tian man we have, I always feel, a little world : a com- 
plete exemplification of God's plan and will, as regards 
an individual soul and life : and many a hint we may get 
from these for which we may be better, — more peace- 
ful, resigned, and cheerful. But I have chosen this 
text in a different view ; because I believe it contains 
a great principle : the great principle on which God gov- 
erns His children, always and everywhere. Speaking 
with that lowliness which is fit, we may yet confidently 
say, that God's manifest purpose is, to keep His chil- 
dren humble, — to make our Saviour everything, and 
ourselves nothing. We are empty ; in Him dwells all 
fulness. "We are lost ; in Him is all salvation. We are 
weak ; in Him is almighty strength. We can bring to 
Him only our guilt, our cares, our sorrows, our poor un- 
worthy selves : in Him is everything, — grace and peace 
and hope and life, wisdom and righteousness and sanc- 
tification and complete redemption. And it is a great 



40 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



and happy Christian attainment, — it is a thing showing 
that grace is strengthening in us, — it is an advanced 
stage, — when we can with our whole heart assent to 
this : when we can be content to be just as lowly, insig- 
nificant, useless, as Christ intends us to be : content if 
His glory be advanced and His work done without us : 
— when the utterance of our whole heart goes forth in 
the Baptist's ancient words, spoken for all time, " He 
must increase ; but I must decrease." 

O brethren, we have great reason for humble thank- 
fulness, when we come to this ! There is good reason 
to hope that the Holy Spirit has worked effectually upon 
our hearts, when human nature, with its tendencies to 
self-assertion, to self-conceit, to the magnifying of self, 
to pushing and unworthy arts for the aggrandizement 
of self, to eagerness to reach a prominent place and to 
get the start of others ; — comes to this ! When we are 
content to go where Christ sends us, and be what he 
bids us ; however little like that is to the vain fancies 
of our earlier days, or even to the ambitious stirrings of 
more advanced years. When we can kneel down in our 
closet, and ask the Holy Spirit to listen to us, address- 
ing our prayer specially to Him, as we ought more fre- 
quently to do ; and lay before Him all our case, — what 
we are desiring and thinking and feeling : and ask Him 
to bring our hearts to this, that our sole desire shall be 
that our Blessed Saviour's glory may be advanced, and 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



41 



our Heavenly Father's will be done, in us, by us, and 
about us : that we should decrease to a little space, — 
till our vain self-importance utterly vanish, — so our 
Master be glorified ! 

God grant that happy and peaceful spirit to every 
one of us : and then how much lighter our hearts, how 
much holier our lives would be ! If we truly and heart- 
ily made God's glory the first thing, God's will the first 
thing, our path would be plainer, our temper would be 
meeker, our spirit would be quieter, our sky would be 
far more bright and clear. If we could but learn to 
habitually mortify self: to put down, within ourselves, 
the pride which God resists ; — the self-righteousness 
which holds us away from the cross of Christ: if we 
could, in brief, just take for the rule of our faith, our 
feelings, our wishes and desires, our whole heart and 
life, the all-comprehending words, " He must increase ; 
but I must decrease." 

Let us think of these words for a little while : and 
try to discern in them the two vital and essential things 
about our eternal well-being. First, we have in them 
the way to be saved : and next, we have in them the 
rule of a holy and happy life. 

And first, as to the way to be saved ; — as to what 
we are to do to have our sins forgiven, and to be re- 
ceived by God as His penitent children, and numbered 
among His own; — what Christian but must feel that 



42 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



the text tells us what it is that lies at the very founda- 
tion of all that? You know how natural it is for us all 
to think that we can do something, or suffer something, 
that may recommend us to God ; — that may make 
some amends for our sins against Him. It is the very 
beginning of any care about the salvation of our souls, 
to feel that we are poor sinful creatures : every religious 
system takes that for granted : that is the starting point 
from which all ways of finding salvation set out. But 
when, you come to take the very next step, O how 
widely God's way and man's way diverge from one an- 
other ! When you come to ask, If I am a sinner then, 
what am I to do to get my sins forgiven ? you know, my 
friends, how grievously wrong men have gone, through 
forgetting or through not understanding or through fail- 
ing to really take home to their hearts the great truth 
of which this text reminds us. " I will do something for 
myself," is the natural thought of the man who is made 
to feel he is a sinner : " I will do something for myself, 
that may be set over against my sins ; that may in some 
measure counterbalance them, — that may induce God to 
forgive and forget them : He will never be so hard as to 
rake up against me the old offences of the past, for which 
I am heartily sorry, and for which I will do my very 
best to make amends." My friends, we must decrease 
from that; that would be saving ourselves. We must 
get off that ground altogether. That is magnifying our- 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



43 



selves, and diminishing our Saviour, — yea, setting him 
aside. Now, "He must increase, and we must de- 
crease." We must learn, and feel in our heart, that we 
can do nothing, to make amends to the law we have 
broken : that we must be forgiven, if forgiven at all, of 
God's free grace, and for our blessed Redeemer's sake. 
"We must decrease, as regards our merit before God, 
and as regards our estimate of our merit and ourselves 
before God, to nothing : and our Saviour must increase 
till He is felt to be all in all. And the very spirit of 
the poor sinful creature, emptied of all vain confidence, 
and receiving pardon and peace and hope of God's un- 
deserved and free love in Christ Jesus, — which is just 
the very spirit of the text, — is contained in words very 
familiar to most of us : words which I have seen written 
on the stone over a grave, and which gave one a good 
and pleasant hope as to the trust in which the sleeper 
beneath it died : words not grand as to their poetry, but 
sublime in their simple truth and faith, — may they be 
ours when we die ! — 

Nothing in my hand I bring : 
Simply to Thy cross I cling. 

My friends, there is nothing whatsoever, that can be 
thought of in this place, more important to every one of 
us than this simple elementary Christian verity : and we 
may well think of it further. It was a right and good 



44 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



question that the poor startled keeper of the prison at 
Philippi put to Paul and Silas, " What must I do to be 
saved?" Yet even in that hour of awful conviction, 
poor human nature, with its tendency to increase, — to 
magnify itself, and trust to itself, and think much of its 
own doings and deservings, — did perhaps look out just 
a little in the "what must I do?" It was as if he 
thought he might be saved by something he might do. 
But the great Apostle put him on quite an opposite 
course, — bade him decrease from that vain estimate, — 
bade him feel his emptiness and trust in his Saviour's 
all-sufficiency: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved ! " And there are few things more 
sad to think of than that poor anxious awakened sin- 
ners, coming with just the Philippian man's question to 
those w T hom they trusted as their spiritual guides, have 
many a time got something so different from the Apos- 
tle's answer: — have got an answer that in some form 
or other bade them look to creature-merit and creature- 
service for pardon of their sins ; and not look to the only 
Saviour, His atoning sacrifice, His blessed life and death. 
There was a long time in the history of the Church, in 
which the answer would have been : " Well, you must 
inflict on yourself the severest punishment for your past 
sins. You must deny yourself everything that human 
nature loves : you must accumulate on yourself every- 
thing that human nature fears, and loathes, and shrinks 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



45 



from : you must abide in a cold cell, and live on the 
scantiest and most repulsive fare, and go barefoot and 
bareheaded, and wear a hair shirt, and sever yourself 
from the society of all you love on earth, and scourge 
yourself morning and evening, and go a weary pilgrim- 
age to the Holy Land : and then, after all this penance, 
God will pardon your sins, and give you entrance to 
Paradise." But we have got beyond that way of mag- 
nifying and saving ourselves, and setting aside the Re- 
deemer. Let us beware of some such notion as this : — 
" Be sorry for the past ; do all you can to be better for 
the future : and leave all the rest to God." Now that 
looks plausible. It looks like placing perfect trust in 
the goodness of God ; and what more can you demand 
of a human being than just to do all he can ? But 
mark, I pray you, that while this notion appears to 
honor God's mercy, it does utter discredit to His justice 
and His truth : His justice, that demands the punish- 
ment of every sin ; His truth, that is pledged to the 
infliction of that punishment: unless the Saviour's aton-. 
ing sacrifice come between the sinner and what he mer- 
its. And then, that which is the other plausible point 
in this notion as to the way to be saved, — the point 
that surely man cannot be called upon to do more than 
just to do his very best, — this proceeds upon utter for- 
getfulness of the great truth in the text. I know that 
it looks an affecting thing, to picture a human being 



46 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



meeting his Maker at judgment: and saying, "I have 
done my very best to please Thee, and to make peace 
with Thee ; and what could I do more ? " Ah breth- 
ren, all this just takes for granted that man is to be 
saved by his own doings : whereas the whole Bible 
teaches us that it is on a totally different footing man 
is to be justified before his God: and that, while it is 
quite certain that the punishment inflicted upon every 
condemned soul will be just what it deserves, it is no 
less certain that the soul to which eternal life is given, 
will get that on an utterly different ground from its own 
deservings, will get that simply and solely for the merit 
of our blessed Saviour. There is an inveterate bent in 
human nature to think that surely it can do something 
or suffer something that will somehow avail it. And 
even when that idea has been put down, the lurking 
self-satisfaction keeps growing up again: the old self- 
righteousness revives, and plumes itself somewhat per- 
haps upon growing grace, — perhaps (so subtle is it) 
upon our attainment in humility and sel^forgetfulness. 
Yea, Christian friends, as long as we live in this world, 
we must be ever seeing anew to the foundation on 
which we rest for eternity, to the ground on which we 
look for acceptance before our God : we must &e trying 
to understand better that thing which at tot n> confu- 
ses and perplexes, the perfect freedom of God's (jraco in 
Christ: we must be daily feeling more deojv; 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



47 



are nothing, and that our Kedeemer is everything, the 
hourly utterance of our very heart should be, " He must 
increase ; but I must decrease." 

Let us pass on to those other thoughts to which I 
ask your attention. In this text we have the rule of a 
noly and happy life. Here is the secret of great useful- 
ness : here is the thing that will keep us kindly, unen- 
vious, and unsoured in spirit : to utterly cast out self- 
seeking, self-assertion, self-conceit : to quite forget our- 
selves, and our own importance and advancement, and 
with a single heart to think of our God and Saviour, and 
of the advancement of His glory in the saving and com- 
forting of souls. May God's blessed Spirit, who alone 
can do it, bring us to that, every one ! 

Now it is a very natural thing to think too well of 
ourselves and our own doings and our own attainments, 
whether in nature or in grace. No one but yourself, 
my friend, knows how hard you work, how earnestly 
you pray, how honestly you strive against temptation, 
how faithfully you seek to fulfil the part God has given 
you here ; and no one but yourself, too, knows in the 
face of how much difficulty, in the presence of how 
heavy a drag-weight, coming from your circumstances 
and your nature, you are doing all these things. And 
you do not know that other people, very many, are 
doing just the like : and that there is many a one, of 
whom you would not think it, into whose heart if you 



48 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



could look, you would see that even the best of your 
doings and deservings are little when compared with 
his. It is only when God's grace helps us to do what 
by ourselves we could never do, that we come to the 
humble, wise, kindly spirit which the text shows us the 
Baptist had attained. If we are left to the unsancti- 
fied impulses of unrenewed human nature, our desire 
and our effort will always be that we should be magni- 
fied, that we should increase, no matter who else has 
to decrease. 

Yet it is easy to see that all that is best in Christian 
character and life will come, only through our arriving 
at the stand-point indicated by the words of the Bap- 
tist. Do you desire to grow in holiness ? Then thai 
can be only through Christ increasing in you and you 
yourself decreasing, — not merely decreasing in your 
estimation of yourself, but your old sinful nature which 
was your original self being daily supplanted and re- 
placed by a better and holier : wrought by God's blessed 
Spirit. If we are to grow holy, we must die daily to 
sin, — die daily to ourselves ; and live to holiness, live 
towards that lost ideal in which we recognize our wor- 
thier self. Our sinful nature must decrease, and Christ 
be formed in us, His mind be in us, His spirit (without 
which we are "none of His") grow in us: yea, our 
sanctification, and our growth in grace, are stated not 
figuratively but in the most literal truth, in the words, 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



49 



" He must increase, and we must decrease." And it 
is a searching test of our spiritual progress, that we 
should be ever lessening in our own estimation ; think- 
ing more humbly of ourselves, and more highly of our 
Saviour. Here is the meaning of what seems a para- 
dox, but what is truly the most reasonable and explica- 
ble of all facts, that it is just the best people who think 
least of themselves : just the most advanced Christians 
who are the lowliest, — the most thoroughly emptied of 
all self-assertion and self-conceit. And thus the secret 
of a holy life, surely our text is the secret likewise of a 
happy one. In casting out self-seeking, we should free 
ourselves from the heart-burnings, the envyings and 
jealousies, the blank disappointments, the bitter sense 
of failure, all those things which are certain to come of 
the desire that we should "increase." A few days 
since, in the library of a certain ancient and famous 
University, I saw written in great letters on the wall, 
two words in the Greek tongue, very familiar even to 
persons of the humblest scholarship, taken from a cele- 
brated passage in a renowned poet, and well fitted to 
stimulate the ambition of young hearts. You can ren- 
der those words weakly in our language, as 66 Always to 
be Best ! " And a certain student of that ancient seat 
of learning, who rose by great energy, great ability, and 
great good-luck, to the highest place which can be held 
by a subject of the British crown, is recorded to have 

3 D 



50 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



said that it was the sight of those words which first 
stirred in him that ambitious fire which was destined to 
be so wonderfully favored. And yet, even looking with 
something of the old feeling upon the grand words, you 
could not but feel that there is something sublimer than 
Homers "Always to be First" in the Baptist's "He 
must increase ; but I must decrease ! " You could not 
but think of the rivalries, the jealousies, the bitterness, 
which even in the quiet world of the University would 
be sure to come of the spirit of the Greek poet's 
words : and of the far greater jealousy and bitterness 
and enmity which would come of their spirit in after- 
life, where (unlike the University mode) the greatest 
rewards are not even pretended to be given to the most 
deserving. And you could not but think how the hum- 
ble, self-forgetting spirit of the text would cast all these 
evil things out forever : how lowliness and resignation, 
and kindliness, and brotherly help, would come, if we 
did but faithfully endeavor (for we shall never quite 
succeed) to make our Redeemer's glory our great end : 
content if that be served, if not by us then by others. 
For it is wonderful how mere worldly ambition, mere 
personal self-seeking, will try to veil itself under a wor- 
thier form. People wishing to get on in this world, 
say, and think, " O, we are not just seeking for mere 
self-aggrandizement: we want to be more useful, to 
serve Christ better, than we can in this humble sphere." 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



51 



You are not so sure of that, my friends. Perhaps Mo- 
ses, in his quiet forty years as a shepherd in Midian, 
was just as useful, in God's view, as in his conspicuous 
forty years as the ruler of the Israelite race. And 
perhaps each of you, Christian friends, in the place 
where God has put you, may serve your Master just as 
well, and earn as bright a heavenly crown, and gain as 
much of the spirit of our Saviour, as you could any- 
where. 0, pray then for grace to be content and 
cheerful and thankful, if Christ's glory grows without 
your help : if His kingdom and cause and work are 
advanced by others more favored, though they be not 
by you. 

And remember this for comfort, — for there are few 
things more trying than to think that God has appoint- 
ed you to be useless, or nearly so, when you believe you 
have it in you to be helpful in His work, — that the man 
who will do most, who will be the most faithful and suc- 
cessful soldier and servant of the Cross, is just the man 
who attains the most of the Baptist's self-forgetting and 
self-denying spirit. Just in proportion to the degree in 
which you cease to think of self, and with a single eye 
make your Master's glory your great end, will be the 
good you will do. There is always some taint of suspi- 
cion about all the philanthropy, all the alms-giving, all 
the visiting of the sick and poor, all the teaching of neg- 
lected children about Christ, that has not this for its 



HE MUST INCREASE; 



great characteristic. There is nothing that goes home 
to the hearts of people you try to influence for good, 
like the conviction that you are not thinking of yourself 
at all; but that you are thinking of them, and of Christ's 
glory in their advantage and blessing here and here- 
after. It is so in everything, you know, as well as in 
religion. Even in respect of some political question, 
or some social reform, the speaker who will impress us 
most is not the man that is thinking about himself and 
his eloquence, or even that makes us think about him 
and his eloquence : it is the single-minded earnest-heart- 
ed man whose one end is to convince you ; — in whose 
mind his subject has increased till it looks like all the 
world, and himself decreased till he has dropped utterly 
out of sight. And so in holier and more important 
things : in all Christian philanthropy, in all missionary 
enterprise at home or abroad. It is not the fussy person 
trying to do good, but with much self-consciousness and 
self-conceit mingling with all his doings, — it is not that 
man who will do most good. It is rather the humbler 
servant whose whole life says, " Now I am not working for 
effect : I don't care what you think of me : I am aiming at 
your good and Christ's glory only." For that humbler 
servant, without perhaps ever thinking of it, has caught 
the sublime spirit of one, concerning whom his Saviour 
said that a greater was never born of woman ; and 
whose words about his Saviour were these, spoken un- 



BUT I MUST DECREASE. 



53 



grudgingly and with all his heart, " He must increase ; 
but I must decrease!" 

You remember what Milton said of the desire for 
honor and pre-eminence : that it is " the last infirmity of 
noble minds." Perhaps the lack of power habitually to 
feel that our Saviour is everything, and that we are 
nothing, and habitually to be content to have it so ; is 
the last infirmity, that longest lingers, in Christian souls. 
Something of the old self-righteousness and self-conceit 
will be still sometimes arising : some vain thought that 
our own good works are really very good after all, and 
that we are more righteous than the poor publican 
standing near: some discontented fancy that we have not 
quite got the worldly success and eminence to which we 
are entitled by our merits : some lack of the hourly, fixed 
belief, that we are poor helpless sinners, and that we 
must be saved and blest through Christ if so at all. O 
let us pray for the continual help of the Holy Spirit, to 
put these things down : to clothe us with humility : to 
number us with the "poor in spirit," whose is per- 
haps no great place on earth, yet the " kingdom of 
heaven" : and so we shall be content if God will but 
lead us by the way He judges right, to where beyond 
these strifes and envyings, these sorrows and sins, there 
is quiet and peace forever! 




IV. 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



" And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." — Ephes. iv. 30. 
^§5§|p7HERE are different ways in which you may 



then you may grieve and vex him by taking the course 
which will make you good and happy. If the person 
be a bad person, then you may grieve him by doing 
what is right. There can be no doubt at all, that when 
a sinner repents and turns to God, though the angels 
rejoice, Satan and his dark and wretched spirits grieve. 
Everything good and happy upon earth grieves that fath- 
er of mischief ; everything sinful and sad pleases him. 

But if the person loves you, and wishes you well, then 
you will grieve and vex him by taking the course which 
will make you bad and wretched. If the person be a 
good person, then you will grieve him by doing what is 
wrong. If your parents are wise and good and Chris- 
tian people, then you who are young lads or young 
girls will gladden their hearts by turning out well. 




If the person hate you, and wish you ill, 



GKIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



55 



And by turning out ill, you will grieve their hearts ; 
and perhaps break them. 

And I suppose most of you know from experience, 
how very powerful a motive is supplied by the remem- 
brance, that what we do will gladden or will vex those 
who are the dearest to us, or the most esteemed by us. 
It is oftentimes a good thing, as well as oftentimes a bad 
thing, that we should be guided a great deal in what we 
do, by what those around us will think. Sometimes, 
the thought of what people will say, leads human be- 
ings to do wrong. Sometimes the same thought leads 
human beings to do the best things they ever do at all. 
From earliest childhood the great motive begins to act, 
which sways man to the last : the thought how what we 
do will be esteemed by others. Milton wrote his great 
poem, actuated by the strong desire that men might re- 
member him and think of him long after he was dead : 
you remember the touching words in which he himself 
tells us so. And the little boy at the village school 
works his hardest to gain his prize, because he thinks 
how it will please his mother. You would not care 
much, my friend, for any distinction you might get, or 
any success, if there were no one but yourself to know 
of it or to care for it. And you know whether, coming 
next after God's grace, there be anything that does 
more to keep a youth, cast alone amid the temptations 
of a great city, in the right path, than the keeping up of 



56 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



the old home-feeling : and whether there be a safeguard 
more effectual than the ready suggestion of the great 
motive that grows out of it. What greater stimulus to 
duty, than this ? — " Now, you will be industrious, and 
honest, and good ; and make them all happy at home ! " 
And what healthier consideration in an hour of tempta- 
tion to do wrong, than that which comes first and most 
natural : " you will not do that, and break your moth- 
er's heart!" 

My Christian friends, it hath pleased God, in the 
words of my text, to appeal to us with just that homely 
consideration. " Grieve not " — the words are spoken 
to all of us — "the Holy Spirit of God." 

And first, mark Who it is we are asked not to grieve. 
You have seen how completely it turns upon the char- 
acter of the person grieved, what the kind of things 
shall be that are to grieve him. Now we all know this 
Person, let us humbly trust : not so well, indeed, as He 
knows us : but surely we know Who it is that cheered 
and comforted us in all our wanderings through this 
world of trouble ; and in all our griefs, of which God 
has doubtless given each of us our share : surely we 
know Him of Whom is everything good, and kind, and 
pure, and true, that we ever have thought, or said, or 
done, in all our life ! The Person we are asked not to 
grieve, is the Holy Spirit of God : the blessed Com- 
forter, Whom the blessed Saviour promised to send: 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



57 



the gracious and Almighty Sanctifier, whose service to 
the Church of Christ in this world was so needful and 
precious, that the Redeemer declared that the Holy 
Spirit's presence was worth more than His own. That 
the Comforter might come, said our Saviour, " it is ex- 
pedient for you," it is better for you, " that I should go 
away." It is the Third Person in the Godhead, God 
the Holy Ghost, equal with the Father and the Son, 
with all God's perfection, and power, and love, that we 
are appealed to not to vex or grieve. And we all know 
how He feels towards us : we all know what He wants 
us to do, and what He wants us to be. Think of His 
nature and His work : and you will understand all 
these. O, Sanctifier and Comforter, what can He de- 
sire us to be but to be holy and happy : to be the things 
it is His work to make us ? Yes, He wishes us to be 
everything that is good and happy. And we grieve 
Him when w r e are sinful: we grieve Him when we 
are miserable. 

You see, then, the kind of Person we are told not 
to grieve. He is the kindest and best: He is our 
warmest well-wisher. And what kindness and consid- 
eration there are in the way in which the text shows 
us our duty ! It is our own good that the Holy Spirit 
is desiring to work out : and we are asked not to vex 
Him by obstructing Him in doing what? Just in 
making us holy and happy ! We can grieve Him, 
3* 



58 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



only by hurting and destroying ourselves! And re- 
member, too, He is Almighty. He can make us do, 
and be, just what He pleases. He could drag us 
wherever He might choose, in spite of all our oppo- 
sition. But that is not the way He takes. He appeals 
to us : He speaks to our heart : He does not value any 
obedience which the heart does not go along with. 
And so He who might command us and compel us, — 
who might bring to bear upon us the threat of eter- 
nal woe, — is content to speak to us, as a kind parent 
might do to a wayward child : saying to us, " Now don't 
do that, for it will vex Me: Don't do what you can 
to give Me a sad heart ! " 

It is right that we should here remember that in 
such words as those of the text, which speak of it as 
possible to grieve God the Holy Spirit, — and in the 
many passages of Holy Scripture which speak of God 
as repenting, and grieved at the heart, and the like, 
— there is a gracious condescension to our ways of 
thinking and talking. In perfect strictness, God can 
feel no pain, no woe ; and of course, no painful feeling 
like grief or sorrow or disappointment. But words 
which would, in perfect strictness, express God's ways 
of thinking and feeling, we could not at all understand. 
And we are so truly made after the image of God, that 
we are sure of this : that the words used in the text 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



59 



convey to us a true impression: and that the feeling 
of the Blessed Spirit when we disappoint Him, resist 
Him, quench Him, is, in Him, what grief is in us. 

And now, looking at this precept, addressed first to 
the Christians of Ephesus, and then to all Christians 
everywhere, the important thing for us to do, is to know 
exactly the rock of which the text warns us. " Grieve 
not the Holy Spirit of God " : May He Himself help us 
to know and understand what the things are that will 
grieve Him. 

How can we grieve the Blessed Spirit ? 

Think of this analogous case. How could you grieve 
your parents, if they were good and wise and Christian 
parents? How could you grieve any good and wise 
man, who was deeply interested in your welfare? 

Why, to look at the case generally, you would grieve 
and vex such by doing anything wrong. And this is 
a complete answer to the question. If any misfortune 
befell you : if some great trial or distress came your 
way through no fault of your own : your friend or your 
parents would be sorry for you : they would be grieved 
indeed ; but it would not be you that had grieved them. 
The only way in which you could grieve some wise and 
kind friend, in the sense in which the word is used in 
the text, would be, by doing something wrong. 

Now, the first and most general view we can take of 
the Blessed Spirit is this : that He is our kindest and 



GO 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



wisest well-wisher. Whatever makes us holy, happy, 
Christian people, pleases Him. Whatever does the re- 
verse of that, grieves Him. And so we know this : 
"Whenever we do wrong, we grieve the Holy Spirit. 
When we admit a suspicious, envious, or uncharitable 
thought : when we say an unkind, uncandid, or ill-set 
word : when we do a sinfui deed ; we grieve Him. We 
know that just as surely as if we could see, each time 
we transgress or fall short, a kind face turning away 
from us with tears in its eyes. And you will gener- 
ally know in your heart, ichen you are vexing the 
Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian at all, your con- 
science will be so far quickened and enlightened, that 
it will tell you that. But when you are trying to get 
nearer Christ and to rest on Him more simply : when 
you are trying to act more constantly and thoroughly 
from Christian principle in all your common work and 
life : when you are seeking to live more above this 
world, and to have more love towards God and man ; 
then you may be sure you are pleasing the Holy Spirit. 
For then you are striving to grow in grace : and it is 
His occupation thus to make you grow. 

But all this is a very general account of the way in 
which professing Christians like us may grieve the 
Holy Spirit. Let us go into details. By doing any- 
thing bad, you would vex a good and wise parent. But 
you would especially vex such a one, if you went and 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



Gl 



did certain special things which he had particularly 
forbidden you to do : or if you refused to do certain 
special things which he had particularly begged you 
to do. 

And it is just so with the Holy Spirit. Everything 
wrong we do, grieves Him. But we may humbly fix 
upon certain tilings, which we are especially sure must 
grieve Him ; because they specially concern His own 
office and work in the great design of grace. I do 
not pretend to point out all of these : but let us go on 
to think of some, which may well come home to the 
hearts of us all. 

First, we may be very sure that we grieve the Holy 
Spirit, by restraining prayer, or by heartless prayers. 
You know, it is part of the gracious work of that 
blessed One, to help us to pray: to warm our hearts 
with child-like and trustful devotion : to bring suitably 
to our remembrance the things for which we ought to 
pray. It is perhaps too common in these days to for- 
get this comfortable truth : I am not careful to explain 
its rationale, or to set forth how in prayer, any more 
than in duty and temptation, the supernatural influence 
weaves in with the natural workings of the heart and 
soul : but what Christian is there but will, in the deep- 
est humility but without a shade of hesitation, testify 
that he has felt, in his warmed and elevated and com- 
forted heart, the fulfilment of the words of promise, 



62 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



— the " Spirit helpeth our infirmities : for we know 
not what we should pray for as we ought : but the 
Spirit itself raaketh intercession for us with groanings 
that cannot be uttered." Now, Christian friends, I 
speak not of such as do not pray at all, for the Chris- 
tian life, even in its lowest degrees, cannot exist with- 
out some measure of prayer : but if you pray little : and 
seldom; and heartlessly; and with wandering thoughts; 
and not feeling really to Whom you are speaking, and 
not really thinking what a strong thing prayer is, and 
what an unspeakable privilege ; can there be any doubt 
that you are grieving that Blessed Spirit who remem- 
bers all that prayer is when we forget it? and who, 
when He sees a human being stand up or kneel down 
to offer prayer, does (as it were) graciously draw near, 
and whisper to the heart, " Now I am here, I am here 
to help you, if you will only let Me do it : and if you 
desire really to pray " ? And O brethren, can you not 
imagine Him turning away as in sorrow from many a 
seeming worshipper in the church, from many a formal 
utterer of words of supplication morning and evening 
in the closet, as though saying, " Ah, I am not wanted 
there ! " Christian friends, does not the conscience of 
each of us testify that we have too often thus grieved 
Him, by offering the cold, heartless prayer, which could 
do quite well without Him : and He all the while stand- 
ing by, ready to help us if we would but have it so ! 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



G3 



But now let us each resolve, by His grace, that it shall 
not be so any more ! Here, in the house of prayer : 
and praying together as an assembled household: and 
when you have entered into your closet and shut the 
door, and are praying to your Father which is in se- 
cret : always remember Who is ready to help you ; and 
always ask His help. Think, you will vex the Holy 
Ghost if you do not ! But if we always ask for Him, 
and look for Him, and wait for Him, — O how hearty, 
how peace-bringing, how heart-cheering would be our 
prayers ! Then the mercy-seat would be a spot whence 
we should return, like Moses, with a radiant face ; and 
with a heart calm, and strong, and unperplexed, and 
cheerful ! And all who see us would take knowledge 
of us, that we had been with Jesus, — and been with 
the Blessed Sanctifier and Comforter, there. 

A second way in which we shall especially grieve the 
Holy Spirit, by especially slighting His office and work, 
will be by refusing to allow Him to comfort us in sor- 
row. My Christian friends, we all forget this. We 
too often forget, that a Christian has no right to be mis- 
erable. It is not merely his privilege to be happy ; it 
is his duty. And I do not hesitate to say, that there is 
no duty which Christians more commonly neglect. 
And I am not thinking of those misguided believers, 
who think that a sour, morose, gloomy spirit, is the 
Christian spirit; and that the more unhappy people 



64 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



are on earth, the likelier they are to be happy in 
heaven: I am not thinking of such, because I trust 
there are none such in this congregation. But I am 
thinking of the disposition there is in all of us, to go 
about brooding upon our troubles, worrying and vexing 
our hearts by all manner of vague forebodings of com- 
ing evil : I am thinking of the gloom of care and anxi- 
ety for the morrow in which many Christians live ; and 
which testifies its existence by the lined faces and the 
gray hairs we see. My Christian friends, to see the 
sad, depressed, anxious way in which very many Chris- 
tians live, you would hardly believe that there is a 
Being, — not an angel, not an archangel, but God Him- 
self, — whose very office and work it is to comfort 
Christian people ; just to prevent them from being sad 
or depressed or anxious ! That is the very work of the 
Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost ; and surely He is 
strong enough for His work, if we would only let Him 
do it, — do it upon our desponding and weary hearts ! 
Yes, when we go about, depressed and fearful and fore- 
boding, we are dishonoring the Holy Ghost in His 
character of Comforter. For He comes and offers us 
comfort; and we do as it were push the kind hand 
away! If we would but let Him; if we would but 
open our hearts to Him ; there is no trouble or loss we 
ever knew that would not be soothed into peace by His 
strong consolation. My friend, if you were sitting by 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



65 



your fireside desponding and beaten ; and if some friend 
very near and kind came to you, and laid a gentle hand 
upon your shoulder, — and ever since our beloved Re- 
deemer laid a gentle hand upon the sick He healed and 
the little ones He blest, there has been something 
soothing in that ; — and if, when your friend began to 
speak words of comfort to you, you cut him short, — 
parent or friend or brother, — by saying, " No : I don't 
believe you care for me ; I don't believe you can help 
me " ; — is there anything that would so grieve such a 
one's kind heart ? And yet, that is just what we prac- 
tically say to the Blessed Comforter, if we plod about 
our path of care and trouble and worry, keeping it all 
to ourselves, and never asking Him to cheer us. He is 
there to do it : He is able to do it : He is willing to do 
it: let us not grieve Him by refusing to let Him 
soothe our grief! 

My brethren, we do what we can to discredit some 
great agency, if we refuse to avail ourselves of it. We 
do what we can to slight some good man, if, when we 
are in some trouble which it is his special vocation to 
help people out of, we decline his proffered help. Now, 
the Gospel provides a spring of consolation ; shall we 
refuse to drink of it? The Holy Spirit of God spe- 
cially devotes Himself to comforting Christian hearts: 
He presents Himself in that character : and if we con- 
tinue always anxious, perplexed, and desponding, this 



66 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



proves that we are refusing to allow Him to do upon us 
the work he offers and desires to do. Xow let us not 
any longer grieve Him, by grieving ourselves. TTe 
never can vex Him, except by harming and vexing 
ourselves. Let us train ourselves to the habit, that just 
as when thirsty we go and drink, so when troubled we 
shall go to the Comforter ! And if a man would be a 
fool who would perish for thirst with a fountain of pure 
water murmuring at his feet, — what are we, brethren, 
if we continue sad and anxious and desponding, when 
we have within our reach the Almighty and All-suffi- 
cient Source of all comfort ! Let us go to Him in sim- 
ple faith and trust, — it is in that spirit of simple trust 
that God would have His children come to Him : and 
the sum of all the distracted soul has to say is just this: 
u Thou art the Comforter ; and I am in distress ; O 
comfort me ! " 

There is a third way in which we shall specially 
grieve the Holy Spirit; and this is by resisting Him 
when He is seeking to lead us to Christ ; by refusing to 
turn in penitence from sin to God ; and then to grow in 
grace and holiness. And here it is, brethren, that hu- 
man beings do most deeply and hopelessly grieve the 
Holy Ghost ; even to the extent of quenching Him 
altogether, and driving Him away so that He leaves 
them alone. You know, my friends, that after Christ 
had died as the Sacrifice for sin, and had wrought out 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



G7 



the great scheme of grace, He left it to the Holy Spirit 
to apply it to the souls of men. It is the Holy Spirit 
who convinces us of our sin and misery as we are by 
nature. It is He who enlightens our minds in the 
knowledge of Christ; — shows us that Christ can save 
us from all that. It is the Blessed Spirit who gives us 
the will to go to Christ : who persuades and enables us 
to embrace Him as He is offered in the Gospel. And 
having begun the better life in us, then, in our sanctifi- 
cation He makes it grow up to perfection. In short, 
penitence, faith, holiness, every virtue and grace, — all 
are of the operation of the Holy Spirit. You may 
truly say, indeed, that it is the whole work of the Holy 
Ghost, including all those parts of His work that have 
been named already, to apply to our souls the atone- 
ment wrought out by Christ's life and death, and the 
several benefits of it. And you may well discern that 
the chief and worst way of grieving Him, is to refuse 
to let Him do for us the great thing He is here to do. 
If you continue in sin ; if you hold away from the 
Redeemer; you do (as it were) cast back the offered 
gifts of the Blessed Spirit in His face : you reject His 
teaching ; you refuse His help ; you bid Him cease 
from pressing on you His unwelcome offices, and go 
and leave you to yourself. This is the great, all-com- 
prehending way of vexing the Holy Spirit: this in- 
cludes all possible ways of grieving him: this, fully 



68 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



carried out, is to quench the Spirit, and to commit the 
one unpardonable sin ! 

Ah, my brethren, it is an unspeakably awful thing, 
when a human being doggedly sets himself to resist the 
pressure of the Holy Spirit, that is urging him towards 
Christ and salvation. For the man that does that may 
be too successful : he may grieve the Spirit into finally 
going away. And you can see why to quench the 
Spirit is the one sin that cannot be forgiven. It is 
not but that the blood of Christ can wash away all sin : 
but not even it can wash away the sin of the man that 
will not wash in it. To quench the Spirit means, 
finally to refuse salvation in the only way in which God 
can give it : it means to utterly drive away that Being 
without whose help we can never repent and never be- 
lieve. The unpardonable sin is the sin of the man that 
will not accept pardon in God's way : just as the incur- 
able disease would be the disease of the man who refused 
to take the only medicine that could cure it. 

Let me repeat this in a word : it is a matter on 
which it is most vital that we should understand clearly. 
TTe can get salvation only by believing on Christ. We 
can never believe on Christ except by the help of the 
Holy Spirit. And if we will not let the Holy Spirit 
help us to believe on Christ, then we cannot be saved. 
When a man quenches the Spirit, grieves away the 
Spirit, the meaning is that he pushes away the only 
hand that can lead him to the Saviour. 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



69 



Now, brethren, in this matter of our spiritual life, 
we have every one grieved the Holy Spirit many times. 
In the days of thoughtlessness and sinfulness, before 
we are converted to God at all, we grieve Him by 
resisting the manifold influences He brings to bear on 
us, urging us to care for our souls and confide ourselves 
to Christ. And if His almighty grace has brought us 
to the Saviour in spite of ourselves, — if we have been 
constrained by Him to repent and believe, — then we 
grieve Him still by our slow growth in grace, — by 
the little progress which the fruits of the Spirit make 
in our hearts and lives. You can think of a farmer, 
looking now in June at a field on which he had be- 
stowed special care and pains, and sown with specially 
excellent seed : and seeing but a poor and stunted 
growth, turning away in sorrow, and saying, " Well, 
that field has disappointed me sadly ! " And just in 
that way, to compare spiritual things with temporal, 
have we grieved and disappointed the Holy Spirit of 
God. Months and years go on : the returning Sun- 
days bring us to God's house ; and we read our Bibles, 
and offer our prayers : and the gracious influences from 
above come down upon us, like spring showers and 
summer sunshine : but O brethren, our faith and hope 
and charity, our patience, our humility, our resignation, 
— how poorly they grow : how hard it is for us to say, 
looking back over these years that are gone, that these 



70 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



graces of the Christian life are growing at all! Yes, 
even we can see that we must be vexing the great 
Husbandman of grace! We are poor, weak, sinful 
creatures, after all He has done for us. 

My friends, let us resolve this day, that, by His own 
grace, we shall strive not to grieve Him in these ways 
any more. We know that we shall not succeed: but 
it will please Him to see us try. We know that life 
will be, to the last, a succession of things to be repented 
of and forgiven ; that, to the last, we shall offend in 
many things, and come short in all we do. But re- 
member, we never grieve the Holy Spirit but when 
we harm ourselves : and we please Him best when we 
are growing holy and happy. Would that we had all 
more practical faith in Him : more readiness to be 
ever going to Him: more of the trustful feeling to- 
wards Him which it is easier for us to have towards our 
Blessed Lord ! And let us resolve that we shall never 
enter this church where we are accustomed to worship 
God, without earnest prayer, earnest though brief, for 
His kind and happy presence : and then, how much 
heartier and happier even these hearty services might 
be, — how they would cheer and lighten and strength- 
en our hearts ! For we live, under the special dispen- 
sation of God's Holy Spirit: All Christian graces are 
of Him. He does not now, indeed, bestow upon Chris- 
tian people such gifts as He bestowed of old. Proph* 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 



71 



ecies have failed : Tongues have ceased : Supernatural 
knowledge of human hearts has vanished away: But 
better, far better gifts than these, He offers still : Things 
not for one age, but for all time : Ends, to which these 
were but the means: daily prayer, wherein our com- 
munion may be with the Father, and His Son Jesus 
Christ : hourly comfort, amid worldly care and sorrow : 
growing grace, making the believer always more like 
His Master. Let us never grieve Him, Who hath so 
often comforted us ; but rather, seek that He may 
dwell in us ; granting us His peace here ; and making 
us meet for glory hereafter! 



V. 



INTOLERANCE. 

" And the contention was so sharp between them, that they de- 
parted asunder one from the other." — Acts xv. 39. 

FF the coast of Cornwall, fourteen miles west 
from the great naval station of Plymouth, and 
jvf^v^^s, £» u jj - n ^ e trac k f homeward-bound ships, sail- 
ing up the British Channel, there rises in deep water a 
great ridge of rocks, whose sharp and rugged crest, 
sometimes quite hidden by the waves, and at other hours 
of the tide appearing above them, was known and dread- 
ed for ages under the name of the Eddystone. Many a 
good ship, bearing many a precious life, after having 
passed in safety the dangers of the outer ocean, was 
wrecked on those rocks, within sight of the English 
shore. For the danger was a hidden one : even by day, 
and still more by night, the poor sailor was in the jaws 
of destruction before he was aware. At last, means 
were taken to warn off from that peril. A lighthouse 
was built on the Eddystone : and so confident was its 
builder in the strength and stability of his work, that he 




INTOLERANCE. 



73 



was accustomed to say that he wished no better than to 
spend a night in it during the fiercest storm that ever 
blew. He had his wish. One afternoon, while he was 
visiting his lighthouse, a fearful hurricane arose, which 
lasted all the night. When the morning broke, the peo- 
ple on shore looked out for the well-known tower, rising 
from the waves ; but it was gone, — swept clean away : 
and no one that had been in it was ever seen again. 
Another lighthouse followed, built of wood, which used 
to bend like a tree before the gale : but after standing 
fifty years it was destroyed by fire. Finally came the 
present noble structure ; which has borne the brunt of 
the fierce storms of the channel, and cast its saving 
light over the dark waters, now for more than a Ifun- 
dred years. It is pleasant to think of the religious spirit 
in which architect and workmen wrought together on 
that slight-looking, yet strong tower. Round the high- 
est chamber you may read, cut in the stone, these words : 
" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain 
that build it " : and the last mason-work done on the 
structure was the cutting on the topmost stone words in 
an ancient language, which mean Praise to God. You 
will think, I know, that it was a good and noble work, 
to erect, in the face of unheard-of difficulties, in the 
midst of a stormy sea, and off an iron-bound coast, that 
lighthouse tower, to warn away from the fatal reef 
where so much treasure and so much life had perished. 
4 



74 



INTOLERANCE. 



My Christian friends, right in our track, sailing over 
the sea of life, there is (as it were) a perilous reef, on 
which many souls have been wrecked ; and on which 
many more, that were not utterly lost, have suffered 
damage of spars and hull. If I were called to name this 
perilous rock in a single word, I should call it Intoler- 
ance : intolerance of people who differ from us. I will 
grant that the disposition to be intolerant of those who 
disagree with them, is found in the highest degree in the 
very best, noblest, most honest and earnest of mankind : 
it is present in the highest degree just in those persons 
who have the warmest hearts and the clearest heads. It 
is very hard, when you see, clear as the daylight, what 
ought to be done ; and when you are earnestly desirous 
that it should be done ; to bear patiently with stupid and 
wrong-headed people who will not think as you do ; or 
who, even after they know quite well what ought to be 
done, hang back and will not do it. And there can be 
no doubt at all, that there is nothing which helps a man 
so effectually to show what seems a fair and tolerant 
spirit in any matter, as the fact, that he really cares 
nothing at all about the matter. The churchman, who 
cares exceedingly little for the Church, — who cares for 
it nothing at all in comparison with his own ease or 
popularity, — finds it quite easy to bear with those who 
want to pull the Church down. But that is not a toler- 
ant spirit : that is an indifferent, selfish, mean, contempt- 



INTOLERANCE. 



75 



ible spirit ; the spirit of the man who can tolerate any 
opinion, because in truth he cares much for none. The 
true tolerant spirit is with him, who holds his views and 
beliefs strongly as his life ; who feels their truth and 
importance deeply and keenly : and yet who can give 
other people credit for honesty and sense when they 
think quite differently, — can bear without irritation the 
temperate expression of these different opinions, — can 
feel that such difference need not excite unkindness, — 
need not break off friendship ; need not bring things to 
this point, that men cannot meet and speak. Because 
one person thinks that one way of appointing ministers 
to vacant parishes is the right way, and another person 
thinks that another way altogether is the right way, that 
is no reason why they should cease to exchange a 
friendly greeting, and pass each other with an angry 
scowl. Yet there is a strong tendency to all this mis- 
chief and misery, in fallen human nature. There can be 
no doubt whatsoever, that intolerance is a rock ahead in 
every honest man's course and in every earnest Chris- 
tian's ; of which he must diligently strive and pray, by 
the help of God's Blessed Spirit, that he may steer 
clear. 

Now it is possible that the words in which I have 
described this peril of which I desire that we all may 
be warned, have turned your thoughts too exclusively 
to differences in matters political, ecclesiastical, or re- 



76 



INTOLERANCE. 



ligious ; to differences on those public questions, which 
we all know do excite such keen and angry feeling; 
and which only very fair, temperate, thoughtful, well- 
informed and large-hearted people, are able to discuss 
without getting into a rage. But we are to remember 
that the self-same spirit which made the Romanist burn 
the Protestant as long as he could ; and which has 
made some men, claiming to be very religious men, 
refuse to speak peaceably to such as would not think 
as they did on some trumpery matter of ecclesiastical 
detail ; may appear just as really in all the ordinary 
business and conversation of life. The rock against 
which I think my text warns us, is Intolerance of dif- 
ference from ourselves, in its largest sense : the desire 
in everything to have our own way : the disposition not 
to yield to others, to give and take : the tendency to 
quarrel with such as differ from us in opinion or be- 
lief ; and to split off altogether from such, parting from 
them in anger. It will be a good work to plant a 
beacon on this rock, to erect a lighthouse here, that 
we may all diligently shun it. It is a dangerous rock : 
the consequences of striking on it are painful and hu- 
miliating : and there is a natural current setting in that 
direction; there is a tendency that way in the hearts 
of us all. TTe all want to get our own way. TTe are 
all ready to be angry if any one comes across our get- 
ting it. And indeed the beacon is already built for us 



INTOLERANCE. 



77 



in the sad story, to which I am to turn your thoughts. 
We may well write upon it, the thankful words cut in 
the last stone of the Eddystone lighthouse : the solemn 
Praise to God ! For if it often helps to cheer us, to 
look back upon the good examples recorded in Holy 
Scripture ; I think it often does us as much good, and 
perhaps there is something that comes even more 
warmly and touchingly home to our weak and way- 
ward hearts, when we are invited to learn and profit 
by the wrong-doings of good men. 

It is a sad story. We see two of the best men that 
ever lived on this world, — who had long been friends, 
— whose heart was in the same work, — who had gone 
through weary journeys and hard toils together, cheer- 
ing and helping one another through all, — now com- 
ing at last to a split and a separation through a wretch- 
ed little quarrel, in which we can see quite plainly that 
both were to blame. St. Paul and St. Barnabas had 
but lately told the Lystrians, that even apostolic friends 
were no more than men of like passions with others. 
And in the account of their quarrel, and in the much 
more it leaves us to infer about it, we find sad proof 
that indeed it is so. " The contention was sharp be- 
tween them " : so sharp, that after it they could not 
work together any more. Doubtless hard words passed 
between the old friends: doubtless it was as the poet 
says so touchingly, 



73 



INTOLERANCE. 



" Each spake "words of high disdain, 
And anger to his heart's best brother." 

And you can easily see here, as in every like case, 
that there is something to be said on each side. Let 
us think of the circumstances. Paul and Barnabas, 
on Paul's suggestion, after a time of quiet work at 
Antioch, -were about to start on a journey, in which 
they were to visit their brethren in every city where 
they had preached the Gospel of Christ ; doubtless to 
offer them counsel and comfort. Barnabas determined 
to take with them his nephew John ; no other than the 
man we know better as St. Mark the Evangelist. But 
Paul objected to this. Mark had already been tried, 
and found wanting. Once before, amid labor and dan- 
ger, Mark had abandoned those he should have held 
by. Why take, on this new journey, one ■ who had 
failed before, and might fail again ? It was no child's 
play that awaited these apostolic travellers. Nerve 
and perseverance were wanted: why take a compan- 
ion who had shown himself lacking in both ? This 
was Paul's view. Then, on the other hand, you can 
think, how the mild, gentle Barnabas would say, that 
it was hard finally to condemn a man for one failure. 
Had not the great St. Peter failed far more shame- 
fully ? And yet that did not hinder his Lord's re- 
newed commission, " Feed my sheep," " Feed my 
lambs ? " Let poor Mark be tried again. Many 



INTOLERANCE. 



79 



prayers, doubtless, Barnabas had offered for his young 
relative : surely all these could not be quite in vain ! 
Mark was not such a lost child, such a black sheep, 
that he must be cast off altogether. There was hope 
for him in this, that he had now left his home at Jeru- 
salem ; and come to Antioch ; and was willing to brave 
all that Paul and Barnabas might have to brave. You 
see, my friends, that each would have much to say. 
Each would cling to his own idea. Their feelings 
would get excited. They would attach undue impor- 
tance to the matter of dispute ; and persuade them- 
selves that great principles were involved in it. Hot- 
ter and sharper the contention grew ; and so, the old 
friends parted ! 

Yes, the Son of Consolation, and the great Apostle 
Paul, after days and months of love and fellowship and 
common cares and toils ; — after doing great good to 
others, and likely enough composing strifes among 
them ; — after " confirming the souls of the disciples, 
and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that 
we must through much tribulation enter into the king- 
dom of God " ; — did what the meanest and least wor- 
thy of mankind can do, — quarrelled, and parted asun- 
der ! 

Each went his way : neither, be sure, quite pleased 
with himself. It is not plain that they ever met again, 
" the beloved Barnabas and Paul," as the apostles and 



80 



INTOLERANCE. 



elders and brethren at Jerusalem called them in their 
letter. When Paul came to some of the old places 
where they had been in company, it would go to his 
heart when they asked him where was Barnabas. But 
we all know how St, Paul, as if repenting his severity, 
afterwards took pains to say a good word of Mark. To 
the Colossians he wrote, "Marcus, sister's son to Bar- 
nabas, touching whom ye received commandment: If 
he come unto you, receive him." Then kindly to Phile- 
mon, he writes of " Marcus, my fellow-laborer." And 
in the last lines he ever wrote, we find the great Apos- 
tle still eager to make amends for that old wrong: 
" Take Mark," he writes to Timothy ; u and bring him 
with thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry." 
Let us thank God for that : and thank God, too, that 
Paul and Barnabas have long since met, where there is 
no difference nor disputing more : where we shall see 
eye to eye ; and where all good men are one in heart, 
— as, after all, they were one in heart, even here ! 

]Sbw the whole story, as has been said, is as a beacon 
built on the rock of Intolerance : its great lesson no 
doubt is. that Christians ou^ht to learn to differ without 
quarrelling. But there are other thoughts suggested, 
on which we may very profitably dwell. 

And one, that comes readily at the first glance at the 
story told by the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, is 
this : <% How candid, straightforward, and above-board 



INTOLERANCE. 



81 



this writer is. You see, there is no glossing over this 
discreditable fact, of the quarrel between Paul and 
Barnabaso There is no reserve in telling the story. 
And you know this is the way with all the inspired 
writers. There is no petty diplomacy about them. 
They tell the unvarnished truth; not minding though 
it should seem to make against their cause. Now we all 
know some good people who, if they had looked over 
St. Luke's shoulder and seen him write these verses, 
would have burst out, " O, that is most injudicious: 
don't say a word about that / " And doubtless heathen 
men would be ready with their taunts, about the two 
preachers of love and mutual forgiveness who could 
not get on peaceably together. Yet, the Holy Spirit, 
who inspired what St. Luke wrote, said to him, as we 
see by what he wrote, "Just tell the truth!" My 
friends, it would be a great blessing if all Christian 
people would learn the obvious lesson, that honesty, in 
telling a story as in other things, is the right thing ; 
whether it be the best policy or not. There is far too 
much diplomacy about many good men. When you 
get behind the scenes, in the case of many good works 
and good people, you find that a great deal of Jesuitism 
is practised : the accounts and reports of religious and 
charitable societies are sometimes cooked, just as much 
as those of fraudulent banks and insurance companies : 
there is an inveterate dislike to let people outside know 



82 



INTOLERANCE. 



the plain truth : and, in approaching a good end, some 
folk think it deep wisdom to approach it, not in a 
straightforward way, but by a tortuous course, round 
corners. My friends, let us lay all that paltry trickery 
aside ! Let us remember that to suppress truth, is 
commonly to suggest falsehood. And let us think how 
St. Luke, writing a page on which his tears must have 
fallen as he wrote it, — a page that would shame and 
sadden Christian hearts to the end of time, — yet deter- 
mined, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, that he 
would be open and speak out God's truth, though that 
truth should bear heavily against " the beloved Barna- 
bas and Paul!" 

And just a sentence. What does this simple out- 
spoken candour of the New Testament writers say as to 
the character of our Blessed Saviour? If there had 
been a flaw in Him : if He had ever said a wrong word 
or done a wrong deed ; should we not have known of 
it ? What an assurance we gather of His stainless per- 
fection ! Truly He, of Whom these open-hearted men 
could tell nothing save what was good, was the Son of 
God! 

A second thought the story suggests, is this : that we 
have much to learn from the errors and failings of good 
men : just as much from these, as from their good 
deeds. For these remind us, that there is much re- 
maining weakness in the very best of our race: and 



INTOLERANCE. 



83 



how much more in you and me ! If Paul and Barna- 
bas erred so sadly, — if they, in the heat of passion, 
said and did what they would look back on with sorrow 
as long as they lived ; — O what error we may any day 
fall into, if we cease to pray for God's continual help 
and grace ! My friends, morning and evening, and at 
all times, let us pray for the never-failing presence of 
the Holy Spirit. Without Him, there is no saying 
what foolish and sinful things you may say and do. 
Any day, any hour, there is that fallen nature within 
you, that may make you say the hasty word, or do the 
wrong deed, that may plunge you in bitter shame and 
sorrow. You can never be sure of yourself, or of any- 
body else, if you have not asked for God's grace, and if 
you are not depending on God's grace : you can never 
feel safe, apart from that ! So, let us ask for it : ask- 
ing, we shall get it. Let us watch and pray. Never 
go into any company : never begin any conversation : 
never take up any work : never go out of your door, 
and never enter it: without a moment's prayer for the 
presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. 
Rely on it, when Paul and Barnabas began that con- 
versation that passed into a bitter quarrel, they had not 
asked the Holy Spirit to keep their hearts right, and 
order their words. If they had heartily asked Him, 
they would have got Him : for what said Christ : " If 
ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 



84 



INTOLERANCE. 



children ; how much more shall your Heavenly Father 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" Yes, 
the promise is clear and plain : it is without limitation 
or restriction : here is a blessing you may pray for and 
be quite sure you will get: the unutterably precious 
presence and help of the Holy Spirit. In every step 
you take in life, you may take a wrong one : and He 
only can keep you right. Every time you open your 
lips you may say a word you may be sorry for, unless 
you have asked His grace. O let us learn this lesson 
from the sad error of the Apostolic friends ; always s 
everywhere, to ask God to give us His Holy Spirit! 
So shall we keep right. If not, we shall go wrong. 

If we had a great deal more time to spend on this 
subject than we have, so that we could glean up the 
minor lessons conveyed, I might point out that this 
sad quarrel arose from an undue favor shown by Bar- 
nabas to a relative ; in short, that it arose from the 
self-same nepotism, or the preference of persons not 
because they are worthy, but because they are con- 
nected with people who have the giving of patronage 
in State and Church, which has at various times dam- 
aged Church and State by loading them with a great 
host of incapables. If Mark had not been the nephew 
of Barnabas, Barnabas would assuredly have felt the 
weight of Paul's argument, that it was not wise to 
choose a man for a work now, who had discreditably 



INTOLERANCE. 



85 



failed in just the same work before. But Barnabas 
was blinded by a prepossession in his young kinsman's 
favor: just as Secretaries of State, Prime Ministers, 
Lord Chancellors, and much smaller men, have occa- 
sionally been. However, we have weightier matters 
to think of ; and matters that come more nearly home 
to ourselves. So let us pass to the great lesson already 
named as by pre-eminence the moral of all the story. 
It is, that Christian people ought to be ready to yield 
to one another, where principle is not abandoned by 
yielding : and that, if they are constrained to differ from 
one another in opinion, then they ought to differ with- 
out quarrelling. O that the kind spirit of the good 
old man had more sway in the Christian Church, who 
said to his brethren in a season of heated controversy, 
" Let us agree as far as we can ; and where we can- 
not agree, in God's name let us agree to differ ! " If 
when Barnabas was urgent to take Mark, Paul had 
said to him, " Well, I think you are wrong ; but if your 
mind is set upon it, I shall not stand in the way " ; they 
would not have quarrelled and parted. And more ; if 
there was anything that would have shaken Barnabas, 
usually so gentle and mild a man, it would have been 
this leaving the thing to his own calm reflection. You 
will never get a number of intelligent persons to think 
exactly alike upon any large subject: but that is no 
reason earthly for the slightest interruption of kindly 



86 



INTOLERANCE. 



feeling and regard among them. God has made men 
to differ on many points : wherever men think for them- 
selves, they will differ : it is only the utterly unthink- 
ing who will follow their leader as a flock of sheep do, 

— abandoning the great right of private judgment, — 
that solemn responsibility of deciding as in the sight 
of God what your opinion and what your conduct shall 
be. Now, brethren, because our fellow- Christians differ 
from us in matters that do not concern salvation, shall 
we draw off from them, — keep them at arm's-length, 

— " depart asunder 99 from them ? Because some good 
people like Episcopacy best, while we like Presbytery 
best : because some good people hold what is called the 
Voluntary principle, while we most resolutely hold the 
principle of a National Church : because some good peo- 
ple hold certain ideas as to what they call spiritual in- 
dependence, which we can see would lead to the most 
mischievous results if carried out, as they never have 
been except in the most tyrannic days of the Church 
of Rome : because of such differences of opinion, im- 
portant as I grant you they are, is there any reason 
why Christian men should quarrel? Is there any rea- 
son why Christian men should refuse to one another 
those little marks of common civility which they give 
quite readily to people who are not Christians at all ? 
We all know whether or not such indications of un- 
christian bitterness, following upon differences of opin- 



INTOLERANCE. 



87 



ion, are to be occasionally, alas commonly, found ! And 
O, my friends, think : Is it not a sore reproach to our 
common religion : is it not a ready occasion to the 
enemy to blaspheme : when it can be said of Christian 
men, discussing any question short of being properly 
vital, as it was said of Paul and Barnabas, that " the 
contention was so sharp between them, that they de- 
parted asunder one from the other ! " 

And more than this. Let us train ourselves to hear 
our most favorite views opposed and controverted, with- 
out getting angry, or quarrelling with those who 'differ 
from us. It is an exceedingly bad thing to withdraw 
ourselves wholly from those who differ from us. It 
will not do, in this state of the Church of Christ, for 
a Christian man to live in his own little shell. Who- 
ever does that, will grow very narrow, very self-suf- 
ficient : will come to think his own little sect or party 
all the world : will get a quite foolish idea of his own 
infallibility and importance. We have all known good 
men, who would have been much better and more use- 
ful, if they had occasionally met and conversed with 
people who did not agree with them. It is a most 
dangerous thing for any human being, to live among 
those by whom his views and opinions are never ques- 
tioned. We all need to be often taken down from our 
vain self-confidence, and to be pushed out of our own 
way ; and all this is best done by frequent contact with 



88 



INTOLERANCE. 



those who, honestly and Christianly, think quite dif- 
ferently from ourselves. I do not say that any Chris- 
tian man would choose often to converse with those 
from whom his differences are vital. We could not 
make a friend of a man who denied the divinity of our 
Blessed Saviour; or the work of the Holy Spirit; or 
the true inspiration of God's Word : we do not want to 
train ourselves to think lightly of such differences as 
these. But it is quite another thing, with a host of 
little contentions that now hold true believers apart. 
Not only is it sinful to make things which do not con- 
cern salvation, grounds of total separation : it is fool- 
ish ; it is deliberately cutting ourselves off from an in- 
fluence we need, and that will do us great good. It is 
most fit that every human being should hourly be re- 
minded, that he cannot get all mankind to think as he 
does ; and that he cannot in everything have his own 
way. And any man who departs asunder from all 
who differ from him, is just putting himself out of the 
way of a most wholesome and necessary discipline : a 
discipline which all true men need ; and none more 
than the most earnest and honest believers in Jesus. 
O brethren, in this sinful world of care, let us resolve 
that we shall bear a great deal from truly good people, 
without quarrelling or parting ! We are all going, as 
we trust, to the same home : let us keep friends by the 
way ! 



INTOLERANCE. 



89 



And now to end this discourse. Let us remark 
how God makes good come at last out of the painful 
differences of good men. The upshot of that separation 
of Paul and Barnabas was that there were two mis- 
sions instead of one. Barnabas and Mark went one 
way : and Paul and Silas another. And doubtless the 
Holy Spirit went with both. And grieved somewhat, 
as that Spirit of peace and love would be, He yet did 
not give Paul and Barnabas up, as they had given up 
one another! God be thanked that the Holy Ghost 
is so much more forbearing with us, than we are with 
our fellow-men ! We have all, perhaps, seen the like 
happy result come of the like unhappy cause : Chris- 
tian men and Christian communities, between whom 
the contention grew so sharp, that they departed asun- 
der the one from the other : yet, out of much unchar- 
itable feeling and speaking, never to be looked back 
upon without sorrow and shame, there came increased 
agency for carrying on the Saviour's work : and re- 
doubled zeal. We thank God, who makes the wrath 
of man to praise Him, for that: but no thanks at all 
to the people who unchristainly quarrelled ! And as 
for us, we may have little influence, or none, in the 
discussion of public questions: but we all have the 
opportunity of being peacemakers in our own circle 
and our own home. It takes two parties to make a 
quarrel : let us resolve, by God's grace, that we shall 



90 



INTOLERANCE. 



not be one. And forasmuch as we hope that all true 
Christians, and all we love and care for, shall meet as 
friends forever in heaven ; let us determine never, in 
anger and bitterness, to part asunder from such on 
earth ! 



VI. 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 

" Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the 
hand of Esau : for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and 
the mother with the children." — Gen. xxxii. 11. 

" And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his 
neck, and kissed him : and they wept." — Gen. xxxiii. 4. 

MIGHT almost leave these two texts to tell 
their own story. A whole sermon will be 
suggested to every thoughtful person by the 
first glance at them. Neither is very remarkable, 
standing by itself : but 0, what a lesson there is for 
you and me when we look at the two together ! And 
you know, my friends, whether you need that lesson, 
or not. You know whether you have not, many a 
time, like Jacob, been full of fear and apprehension in 
looking forward to something that was to happen : and 
then, like Jacob, when the thing did happen, found 
that all that anxiety was perfectly needless, and that 
you had been disquieting yourself entirely without 
cause. Let us never begin to think on any subject in 
this place, without a brief prayer for the guidance of 
God's Holy Spirit : but specially to-day, when the text 




92 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



brings before us a matter which in this age is of supreme 
practical importance, a matter which concerns the peace 
and quiet of every one of us at every hour we live, 
a matter which gravely affects our spiritual condition 
and the reality of our faith in God, let us ask His 
life-giving presence, that the truth now set forth may 
come with His demonstration to the hearts of all. 

As for those two verses of Genesis, taken separately, 
there is not much to remark about them: unless it 
be that they show us that human nature nearly eigh- 
teen hundred years before Christ, was just like human 
nature nearly nineteen hundred years after Christ. In 
this world, even yet, it is so common a thing for a 
man who has been ill-used by another to take re- 
venge if he can ; that everybody reads, quite as a mat- 
ter of course, that first verse, which shows us that 
Jacob thought it likely that his brother Esau, whom 
he had used so ill, whom he had overreached so 
shamefully, would, now that he had it in his power, 
avenge himself, and that bitterly and bloodily. And 
in that prospect, Jacob was afraid. " I fear him," are 
Jacob's words ; " lest he will come and smite me, and 
the mother with the children." All that was quite 
natural. 

Then as for the second verse, if it stood alone, it 
would be a pleasing story, but it would not afford 
matter for a Christian discourse. What could be more 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



93 



natural than that two brothers, parted for a long time, 
meeting now for the first time in twenty-one years, 
should meet thus kindly? And the Orientals were, 
and are, a demonstrative race. They make more out- 
ward show of their feelings, than we do. When death 
enters a dwelling there, instead of sitting down quietly 
by the fireside, weeping silently, praying silently, bear- 
ing with no parade of what is borne, as we do, people 
break out into passionate shrieks and cries : they rend 
their garments, they scatter ashes on their heads. 
And so, when Jacob came in view, it was all what 
we might expect that " Esau ran to meet him, and 
embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." 
And less than one-and-twenty years work so great 
change on human beings, that we do not wonder 
that "they wept." 

But these two verses are like those chemical solu- 
tions which have little power apart, but which united, 
have the power of life or death. The thing for us, 
to-day, to think of and to learn from, is, first, Jacob's 
fear ; and then, how needless his fear proved to be. 

Let us recall the preceding part of the story, which 
explains this. Esau, as we all remember, vowed ven- 
geance against Jacob for that false and cruel act of 
taking away by subtilty the blessing of the first-born. 
Then Rebekah, the mother of both, sent her favorite 
son Jacob away, till Esau's anger should cool. And 



94 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



Jacob went away, by Bethel, to Laban his mother's 
brother who dwelt at Haran : where he married La- 
ban's two daughters, Leah and Rachel. But it was 
not for a few days, as the mother thought, that her 
son was to be parted from her: it was God's will 
that years should pass on, and that mother and son 
should never meet more on earth. But worldly pros- 
perity attended Jacob. Children grew up around him: 
his flocks and herds increased : wealth accumulated. 
Yet there was one bitter drop in his cup, all the while. 
Year by year Beersheba and his mother's tent would 
grow misty and far away : he was content to live and 
labor at Haran. No doubt, he would think, in his 
hours of leisure, of his mother growing old, never 
having seen her grandchildren's faces : of his blind 
father, and what he thought now of the unworthy 
trick that gave the younger son the elder's blessing: 
above all, of his brother, and whether he had got 
over his wrath. That was evidently a fear always 
at the bottom of his heart : never quite absent, and 
growing greater as the time of his return drew nearer. 
That was the skeleton in Jacob's tent. Ail these 
years of prosperity would be embittered, more or less, 
by that old sin. 

But those years passed : and now Jacob, who had 
left Beersheba a lonely wayfarer, is returning from 
Haran, the head of a great host. There were his 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



95 



wives and children: and, as he said himself, he had 
oxen and asses, flocks, and men-servants and women- 
servants. But little did those who formed that com- 
pany probably suspect of the fretting fear which all 
this while was growing in the heart of the master 
of all. At length it became apparent. The company 
was drawing near to that mountainous tract where 
Esau dwelt; and where, during these years, he had 
gathered around him a number of daring men, and 
laid the foundation of that influence which in the end 
made his descendants the kings of the land of Edom. 
And now, the meeting so much dreaded, and so long, 
was at hand. Jacob sends messengers before him 
with friendly words to Esau : but they come back with 
an ambiguous answer, which might mean either peace 
or war. Esau was coming; and coming with four 
hundred men. Conscience, as we know, makes men 
cowards: and Jacob regarded this as a confirmation 
of his worst fears. He was "greatly afraid and dis- 
tressed " : and he took what precaution he could. He 
divided his company into two bands; so that, if Esau 
came and smote the one, the other might have op- 
portunity to escape. And having done this, he does 
just the best thing that man or woman in anxiety of 
mind can ever do: he turns to God in prayer; and 
tells all his fear to the Almighty; and asks deliver- 
ance in these words which form my first text. And 



96 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



it is interesting to think that here we have the very 
first direct prayer which is recorded in the Holy Scrip- 
ture. Many a prayer had doubtless been offered, but 
this is the earliest of which we are told: and remem- 
ber, Christian friends, in your seasons of anxiety, that 
it was anxiety, and the foreboding of ill, that drove a 
human being to send up to God the earliest recorded 
prayer. Doubtless the same things will prompt prayers 
by millions down to the very last. Yet, for all his 
prayer, you can see he passes an anxious night: and 
he is earlv afoot in the mornina*, bavins thought of 
something more to do. He selects a valuable present : 
goats, sheep, camels, cattle, asses. And you can see 
how possessed he is with the presentiment of evil. He 
sends on his present, with an interval between each 
drove : so that even if Esau met the first in an evil 
spirit, his wratli might melt away at the sight of gift 
after gift of his brother's kindness. You can discern 
that the wealthy owner of all that great array, has 
a heart as heavy and perplexed as the solitary way- 
farer that lay down at Bethel with the stone for his 
pillow. Yes. that night was a sore retribution for the 
day on which he had deceived his blind father. 

Then there was a mysterious visitation. The pres- 
ent was gone : his wives and children were sent on- 
ward, and all that he had ; and Jacob remains at night- 
fall by the brook Jabbok: doubtless again in earnest 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



97 



prayer that God would bring him and his safely 
through this time of terrible trouble. And now, while 
wrestling in that fervent supplication, whether in fact 
or in vision, it seemed as though he were engaged in 
wrestling with a personal being. The circumstances 
are briefly given: the manifest lesson for us is the 
prevailing power of prayer with God. "There wres- 
tled a man with him until the breaking of the day." 
And at length, weak, yet confident in self-despair, 
Jacob prevails with God : and that mysterious Being, 
the angel of the Covenant, the Blessed Redeemer 
Himself, gives Jacob His blessing, and a new name. 
He was no longer to be Jacob, which means Sup- 
planter ; but Israel, which means A Prince with God. 
He calls the place Peniel, which means The Face of 
God, because he had seen God face to face, and lived : 
and as the sun rose, bearing, like St. Paul, a bodily 
reminder, in an infirmity never to leave him, of a 
special manifestation of the Almighty, — halting upon 
his thigh, yet having vanquished in prayer, he goes 
on and overtakes his company. 

Yes, he goes on : and with what light step for all 
that lameness ; and with what a thankful, relieved 
heart! All his fears were gone. He felt safe. He 
" lifted up his eyes " : and the Hebrew words convey 
that the laden, anxious look of yesterday was gone : 
he had cast his care on God ; and his face was cheer- 

5 G 



98 



NEEDLESS FEAES. 



ful and hopeful. His wives and children would see 
at once, be sure, that he was a different man. And 
now, see the answer to that night of prevailing prayer. 
TTe do not know with what intention Esau had left 
his fastness in the hills. But we are sure that we 
see God's hand in the proving vain of all Jacob's 
fears. All those twenty-one years had been spent in 
the fear of again meeting Esau. Many a time, doubt- 
less, for human nature is just poor human nature, 
Jacob had pictured terrible scenes of wrath and re- 
venge and blood : and had terrified himself with the 
vague, unknown future, just as many of you have 
many a time done. And now here is the meeting so 
feared. Esau comes ! and, sure enough, the dreaded 
four hundred. But he seems, the warm-hearted though 
not wise man, to have passed by the presents : he did 
not care that day about goats and sheep and camels : 
he hastens fast to welcome the long-parted playmate 
of childhood : they were not world-hardened men, but 
boys again together. " Esau ran to meet him, and 
embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him : 
and they wept ! " 

Now think, brethren, what a revulsion of feeling 
there would be in Jacob's heart. He would think, 
M Have I been all these years vexing myself for this ! " 
Here was the thing, so happy and pleasant and kindly 
when it came, that had many a time broken his night's 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



99 



rest at Haran just to think of it: that had been a 
dull gnawing at his heart, making him uneasy and 
restless in cheerful company: that had been the drop 
of gall in every cup he tasted ; all these years ! And 
one thing we may be almost sure of : that in all his 
picturing out of this dreaded meeting, thinking of it 
as coming in twenty sad ways, if there was one thing 
he never pictured out, it would be just the meeting as 
it actually came ! The thing you expect is, in this 
world, the last thing that is likely to befall you. 

And now, my friends, let us dwell for a little while 
on two practical thoughts, coming very closely home 
to ourselves, which are suggested by all that has been 
said. 

The most obvious of these is this, How needless 
are our fears ! In how many cases we conjure up 
things to vex and alarm us ! For one-and-twenty 
years Jacob had kept himself unhappy through the 
fear of a meeting which, when it came, proved one 
of the happiest things that ever befell him in all his 
life. Now have not you many a time looked forward 
with great anxiety to something that was coming ; and 
then when it came, found that all your anxiety had 
been perfectly needless? We all have it our power 
to make ourselves miserable, if we look far into the 
years before us and calculate their probabilities of 

LOFC. 



100 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



evil, and steadily anticipate the worst. It is not expe- 
dient to calculate too far ahead. Of course extremes 
are wrong : we are not to run into over-carefulness 
and anxiety on the one hand, nor into recklessness 
and imprudence on the other. But it may safely be 
said that we are forgetful of that reasonable faith in 
God which is at once our duty and our inestimable 
privilege, if we are always looking out into the fu- 
ture, and vexing ourselves with endless fears as to 
how things are to go then. O that we had all more 
faith, Christian friends, in God's sure promise made 
to every true Christian, that as the day, so shall the 
strength be ! If your affairs are going on well now, 
be thankful, and try to do your duty and to do your 
best, as a Christian man and a prudent man, and then 
leave the rest to God. Your children are about you : 
no doubt they may die ; and it is fit enough that you 
should not forget the fragility of your most prized 
possessions : it is fit enough that you should sometimes 
sit by the fire, and look at the merry faces and listen 
to the little voices, and think what it would be to 
lose them. But it is not needful, nor rational, nor 
Christian-like, to be always brooding on that thought. 
And so with everything else. Your health may break 
down. Some fearful accident may befall you. A hun- 
dred sad contingencies are conceivable. And how often 
these fears prove utterly groundless! We have all 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



101 



known the anticipated ills of life, — the danger that 
looked so big, the duty that looked so arduous, the 
entanglement that we could not see our way through, 
— prove to have been nothing more than spectres on 
the horizon ; and when at length we reached them, all 
their difficulty had vanished into air, leaving us to think 
how foolish we had been for having so needlessly 
set up phantoms to disturb our quiet. I remember 
well how a good and able man who died not long ago, 
told me many times of his fears as to what he would 
do in a certain contingency which both he and I thought 
was quite sure to come sooner or later. I know that 
the anticipation of it cost him some of the most anx- 
ious hours of a very anxious though useful life. But 
his fears proved just as vain as Jacob's in the prospect 
of meeting Esau. He was taken from this world be- 
fore what he dreaded had cast its most distant shadow. 
God, in His own way, delivered that man from the 
event he had feared. 

No thoughtful person, with the subject of this dis- 
course present to his mind, can look at a congregation 
like this, without thinking what a multitude of inter- 
ests there must be, connected with your homes and your 
lot : what an immense amount of anxiety and care 
these hearts have known, that are now within these 
walls ! Ah, it takes long wearing to draw lines upon 
the face, and turn the hair gray ! But of this we may 



102 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



be sure : that at least half of all the anxieties and 
fears you have known, have been about troubles that 
never came at all. But it is one of the last lessons 
we learn, really to believe and to take for our own 
the Psalmist's argument from the past to the fu- 
ture : " The Lord hath been mindful of us : He will 
bless us ! " And although God has led you so won- 
derfully and graciously in the years that are gone, 
smoothing your path, and opening it up when it 
seemed hedged with thorns, and sending light when 
you looked for nothing but darkness, yet, not taught 
by all that, perhaps there are some anxious hearts 
here to-day, wondering how they are ever to get 
through the work before them; or how they are to 
bear some trial or bereavement that seems coming : 
things which may never come, — or if they do come, 
God will send strength and grace sufficient for the 
need. Now, doubtless, all this is in some measure the 
result of original make and temper. Some people are 
of an anxious, desponding temperament; ready rather 
to anticipate evil than to look for good. But all of 
us, brethren, need more faith in God. How compre- 
hensive a prayer, that is, asking so much for time 
and for eternity, " Lord increase our faith ! " TTe 
bear a far heavier burden than we need bear. If we 
had the faith which we ought to have, and which the 
Holy Spirit is ready to work in us, we should cast 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



103 



all our care on God, who careth for us. It is not 
strange, my friends, that we, Christian people, should 
so often be " careful and troubled about many things," 
when our holy religion, besides being many things 
else, is one great antidote against over-anxiety : when 
it is not merely our privilege, but our commanded 
duty, not to be anxious or fearful : when we not 
merely make ourselves unhappy, but positively com- 
mit sin, — distrust God's promise, disbelieve God's 
love and grace and faithfulness, — if we plod about 
our duty under a burden of care and fear, as Jacob 
did. " I would have you," says St. Paul, " without 
carefulness." "Take no thought," says our Saviour, 
— and the word He used means no over-anxiety, — 
" Saying, What shall we eat, or What shall we drink, 
or Wherewithal shall be clothed: But seek ye first 
the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; and all 
these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore 
no thought" (that is no over-anxiety) "for the mor- 
row." And then St. Paul goes more into details : 
tells us how we are to do all this : gives us the steps 
of the process by which we are to reach that blessed 
equanimity which our Lord commands : " Be careful 
for nothing: but in everything, by prayer and suppli- 
cation, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made 
known unto God. And the peace of God, which pass- 
eth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and 
minds through Jesus Christ." 



104 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



And this brings us naturally to the second thought 
suggested to us by the whole story of that terribly 
anxious time. 

It is, that in those seasons of anxiety and forebod- 
ing which through our weak faith and our remaining 
sinfulness will come to us all, we should remember 
what Jacob did; and where Jacob found relief. He 
turned to God in prayer. He went and told God all 
his fear, and asked deliverance from God. And not 
once, but many times : through a long night of terri- 
ble alarm and apprehension, he wrestled in urgent 
prayer. And see what he got by it. He got relief 
of heart, certainly : of that we are sure. Perhaps he 
got more. We cannot say how far those prayers went 
to turn Esau's heart ; and to make him meet Jacob in 
that kindly spirit. Perhaps Esau left his home with 
his four hundred men, with a revengeful purpose. 
Perhaps he intended to carry out that intention ex- 
pressed so long before, that he would slay the sup- 
planter who had used him so badly. Perhaps he felt, 
as he was going along, the old time come over him : 
thought of the days when they were little children 
together: felt he could excuse Jacob's unworthy deal- 
ing ; and that the old bygone offence might be by- 
gone forever : till at last they met in love. Ah, 
brethren, if that were so, it was not mere natural 
working of opinion and affection in Esau's heart. It 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



105 



was God's mighty power that did it: did it in an- 
swer to Jacob's prayer. 

Shall I tell you a like story, of another man ? What 
saith the Psalmist? 

" The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains 
of hell gat hold on me : I found trouble and sorrow. 
Then called I upon the name of the Lord: O Lord, 
I beseech Thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the 
Lord, and righteous: yea, our God is merciful. The 
Lord preserveth the simple : I was brought low, and 
He helped me ! " 

Yes, Christian friends, here is the neverfailing thing 
to go on, in our times of anxiety and trouble. When 
we are overwhelmed, fearful, perplexed, anxious, let us 
go to God ; and humbly and earnestly tell Him all 
we are thinking and fearing, and ask him to deliver 
us and comfort us. " Call upon Me in the day of 
trouble : I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." 
If ever there were words confirmed by the experience 
of Christian people, you have them there. Perhaps 
our prayer may cause the trouble we bear, or we 
dread, to go away. Perhaps, the stroke that seemed 
sure to fall, may be withheld: perhaps, the hope that 
seemed sure to be blighted, may be fulfilled after all: 
perhaps, the blessing that seemed sure to be taken away 
from us may be spared with us yet. Perhaps, through 
our prayer, it may be with us as it was with Jacob: 
5* 



106 



NEEDLESS FEABS. 



when we come up to the time, the trial, the duty, we 
feared, we may find that there is nothing about it to 
be afraid of. But our prayer may be answered in a 
way that is better and happier still. It may please 
God to allow all that we feared, to befall us. It may 
please Him to disappoint the hope, to frustrate the 
work, to continue the long disease, to bring the be- 
loved one down to the grave : but with all that, to 
resign our heart, to make us humble and content, to 
sanctify the trial to work in us a patience, a faith, a 
humility, a charity, a sympathy, that are worth, a 
thousand times over, all worldly happiness and suc- 
cess. what an attainment it is, which Christians 
sometimes reach, to feel, if only for a little while, 
that our whole heart's wish is, that our Blessed Sav- 
iour's will be done, and His glory be advanced ; and 
that as for us. we are content to go where He leads us, 
and to do and bear what He sends ; sure that the way 
by which He leads us is the right way, and that it will 
bring us to our Home at last ! 

And prayer will bring us to this, if anything will. 
Do not, with the gnawing anxiety at your heart, sit sul- 
lenly and try to bear your burden alone. Go with a 
lowly heart and roll your burden on the strong arm of 
God Almighty ! O how it will lighten your heart to 
tell Him, simply, all your fears ! You will come back, 
like Jacob, from your Saviour's footstool, calmed and 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



107 



cheered. And even if the stroke should fall : even if 
we come out of our trial, somewhat stricken and sub- 
dued, — not quite the people we were, — as Jacob came 
lamed from that long night of prevailing prayer, — we 
shall be thankful and content if the stroke be sanctified 
to us : as he (we may be sure) would never murmur, 
as he halted on through life. 

One word to prevent misapprehension. All this 
peace and hope is spoken only to Christian people. 
" There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked " : or 
to any who have no part in Christ. We can speak no 
comfort to such, in their fears. There is too good 
reason for that dull foreboding of evil they bear through 
life. Their fears are not needless. If there be any 
one here who feels a constant vague dread of coming 
misfortune eating the heart out of every earthly bless- 
ing, to such we would say, Do not think to reason 
yourself out of that, or by gayety to escape from that. 
There is just one way of peace for you, — Believe in 
Christ ! Think of His kind words : " Come unto Me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
you rest ! " And " Him that cometh unto Me, I will in 
no wise cast out ! " 

Some of you know those words of the ancient school- 
man, with which he prefaced an earnest prayer to God. 
" I entered this world in lowliness ; I have lived in it 



108 



NEEDLESS FEARS. 



anxious ; I shall depart from it alarmed and fearful ! 99 
Yes, it is so : Anxiety is the lot of very many in this 
life. I have sought, by God's help, to show the 
anxious and careworn among you how to escape their 
fears. And how shall I end a discourse on the Gospel 
way to such peace as God thinks good for us in this 
world, without reminding you who it is that gives us 
the " strong consolation " we need : that Blessed " Com- 
forter which is the Holy Ghost," whom the Father 
sends in the Redeemer's name, to work in us " the 
peace of God 99 ; and the Saviour's own special peace, 
which is not like that the world giveth. Brethren, in 
every prayer we offer, let us ask the fuller and more 
constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. There 
is not a step in our heavenward pilgrimage, not an 
emergency in our better life, at which His happy influ- 
ence, His breathing upon our hearts, is not the very 
thing that is best for us. If He were always sensibly 
with us, our anxieties and fears would go ! Come now 
and let us ask Him to work in us our Master's peace ; 
and to make all things that come, tend to sanctify us. 
And then, our souls shall grow in all grace, as the 
green leaves round us flourish through the spring 
showers and sunshine ! 



VII. 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 

M And I saw no temple therein." — Eev. xxi. 22. 

ET us confess it, this sentence falls somewhat 
blankly on the ear : it is somewhat of a disap- 
pointment. Everything else that we are told 
concerning Heaven, is all we could wish. But at the 
first glance, and the first thought, there is something sad 
in the assurance, that there is no temple there. 

The most pleasing feature in the most pleasant sum- 
mer landscape, is the spire of the country church rising 
above green trees into the blue sky. There is no sight 
in whose presence many men can pause so delightedly, 
as the little sanctuary amid its quiet expanse of green 
graves, gray and ivy-grown. The noblest edifices in 
this world are, what they ought to be, churches dedi- 
cated to the worship of Almighty God. The material 
glory of our sister country, after all, is in her noble 
cathedrals, so unutterably solemn and majestic: where 
man, long centuries since, did his very best to make a 
worthy house for God. And there is more and better 




110 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



about Christian churches, than any gratification of mere 
sense and taste. There is no place, perhaps, in this 
world, where many Christians have so often felt so 
quiet and restful and happy : no place where they have 
found themselves so lifted up above their common cares 
to so sacred an elevation : where doubts cease to per- 
plex, and burdens grow light, and the blessed Redeemer 
and the Blessed Holy Spirit seem to draw so near. 
Never, Christian friends, till you reach Heaven at last, 
will you feel so near it, as you have by God's grace 
sometimes felt yourselves in the house of prayer. Our 
hearts have been poured out in the earnest prayer : 
they have arisen in the hymn of praise : they have been 
nerved, cheered, and comforted by the exhortation : we 
have sometimes been enabled to feel as if our cares fell 
off from us, entering that retreat ; and as if things 
which vex at other times lose their power to touch us, 
bending over the white Communion-Table. And so it 
seems strange, that the place where in this world we 
have known most of the peace of Heaven, will not be 
there. 

"No night there," sounds cheering, when we think 
of all that darkness implies, and when we think how 
much there is of it here. No more death, no more 
pain, no more sorrow nor tears, — all these assurances 
seem natural and fitting. But is the last Christian 
church where we shall worship on earth, the last we 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



Ill 



are ever to see ? Everything else is as we could 
wish about Heaven, but O, must there be no Temple 
there ! 

And then, the explanation given of how this comes 
to be, does not at the first satisfy us. "We all know, 
that in this world, to say that every day should be 
kept as a sabbath, comes to exactly the same thing as 
having no sabbath at all. Some of you will think how 
a certain eminent man, set free from work after many 
years of weary and uncongenial drudgery, said that 
he found that where all your time is holiday, there 
are no holidays. And yet, this is all the comfort 
given us in the presence of the statement that in 
Heaven there is no temple. We are told that there 
will be no temple in particular, because the place 
will be all temple. It is, of course, as you all know 
only too well, but a very vague and indistinct idea 
we have in our minds, of what Heaven is. It is a 
Golden City, it is the new Jerusalem : and the book 
of Revelation tells of its streets, and walls, and gates : 
it is likewise a country, sought through all these ages 
by those who confessed that they were no more than 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth: we are told of 
thrones, crowns, palms, hymns of praise, and of these 
last we even partly know the very words. But O, 
City and Country, better Canaan or New Jerusalem, 
how confused, indistinct, imperfect a vision it is we can 



112 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



discern, of that Happy Place where those dearest to 
us are gone, and where we hope through Christ to 
go ! How little you know of what your child or your 
parent that left you is like, or is doing, now ! Yet we 
know this, that all the region is holy : that the seen and 
felt presence of the Saviour pervades it all, — for there 
" we shall be forever with the Lord " : and that the rea- 
son why there is no especial temple is, that all heaven is 
hallowed into a most true temple by the all-pervading 
presence of our God and Redeemer. " I saw no tem- 
ple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb 
are the temple of it." 

Now the somewhat blank and disappointed feeling 
that rises at the first glance at our text, comes of our 
applying our common worldly ways of thinking to the 
better world ; — to a state of being that transcends our 
present thoughts. As we are now, Christian friends, 
it is only for short isolated times that we can be at 
our best, in the matter of spiritual mood and holy 
feeling. If every Sunday were a Communion Sunday, 
our Communion Sundays would not be the very sol- 
emn and elevating seasons which we wish to have them 
now — and by God's grace often do find them now. 
And if some in this country are ready to complain, 
that the Church fails to provide them more frequent 
occasions on which to show forth their Redeemer's 
death as He commands us, they may well be reminded 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



113 



that there is compensation for this, in the far greater 
spiritual pleasure and profit which the devout commu- 
nicant in Scotland seems to enjoy, than the communi- 
cant who every week or two sees the Communion- 
table spread ; and the most sacred of Christian rites 
thus made what we may without offence call compara- 
tively cheap and common. Yes: as we are now, my 
brethren, what is made common, comes to be held 
cheap: we need to have places specially set apart for 
God's worship : we need to have seasons which shall 
be esteemed specially sacred : the Lord's Day more 
holy than the week-day; the Communion Sunday one 
for which more than ordinary preparation is made, and 
on which we anticipate more than ordinary peace, and 
rest, and holy elevation. If the Mount of Communion 
did not rise above the daily pilgrimage path, — if it 
were all in the same dead level, — it would not be 
to the believer what by God's grace it often is. 
You all know how true to the Christian's experience 
are the Saviour's words, " Me ye have not always." 
If there be times when our Lord seems very near, 
and we find from His presence a peace that passes 
all understanding, there will come times too when 
He seems to withdraw Himself, and leave us to 
try how we could stand alone. It is the very con- 
dition of our being here, that we cannot be always 
at our best: and if we should be able to keep for 



114 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



a long time at the same level, that level must be a 
humble one. 

But in heaven, all this is changed. And it seems 
to me, my friends, as if there were a sudden light 
cast upon the state of the redeemed and blest, by the 
brief statement that as for heaven, the happiest and 
holiest place in all the universe, there is no temple 
there. You know, that statement might, standing 
by itself, read in either of two quite opposite ways. 
It might be the very worst, or the very best, ac- 
count of the place of which it is written. " No temple 
there ! 99 How sadly the emigrant, who has settled 
far in the woods of the Western continent, or up in 
the Australian bush, writes home to his friends that 
there is not a church within fifty or a hundred miles : 
that not once in months can he and his household 
meet together in that familiar way which is so cheap 
here ; but which far away there men value at its true 
worth ! And, sadder still, to pass through the poorest 
quarter of some huge city: to see lane after lane of 
comfortless dwellings, where life is dragged out in sin 
and want, and vice the consequence of want: and to 
think as you may sorrowfully think in the great me- 
tropolis of England, that there are thousands on thou- 
sands of immortal beings who never enter God's house 
and never feel that as a want and deprivation. Yes : 
no church, no minister, no one to care for perishing 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



115 



souls ; — what a sad story ! And strange, that the 
very thing which would be the saddest circumstance 
about an earthly city, is one of the happiest and most 
significant circumstances about the New Jerusalem 
above ! " No temple there," might mean no care about 
religion at all. "No temple there," may mean that 
the whole place is one great temple ; and that the 
whole life there is worship: and that the inhabitants 
are raised quite above all earthly imperfections, and 
above the need of those means which in this world are 
so necessary to keep grace in the soul alive. It is fit, 
brethren, that we should know the kind of region of 
which such a declaration as that in the text is made. 
If it be a bad and sorrowful place, it must be very 
bad and sorrowful. If it be a holy and happy place, 
O how holy and happy it must be ! And written of 
Heaven, how much these words tell us of the entire 
holiness, of the supreme spiritual elevation, knowing 
no depressions, no dark days, of the blest souls there ! 
All temple would, with creatures like us, be equivalent 
to No temple at all. But, with glorified souls, it means 
that they are always at their best: always holy and 
happy: always up to the mark of the noblest com- 
munion with their Saviour and their God ! For 
though it is not to be supposed that the glorified 
Saints above are to spend the whole eternity in the 
actual direct singing of God's praise : though doubt* 



116 



XO TEMPLE IX HEAVEN. 



less there will be abundant happy employment even 
in that perfect rest : though many things done by 
blest souls in heaven may be what we should call 
secular. — that is. not directly bearing upon the for- 
mal praise of the Eedeemer; yet all they do will be 
in the truest sense sacred, because all will be done in 
a holy spirit, and all as for Christ. 

Xow, Christian friends, look back on the very hap- 
piest and most peaceful communion season you ever 
knew : think of the sacred hour when every worldly 
burden fell from off you, — when the power of sin 
within vou seemed to die, — when the strong consola- 
tion of the Blessed Comforter seemed to fill your heart 
as if it never would go away, — when the Saviour 
seemed so close to you that the breathing of your 
whole being seemed that of the Apostle, " Lord, it is 
good to be here." Then try to think what it would 
be, if, instead of going down from the mount of ordi- 
nances into the atmosphere of worldly work and care, 
to speak bitter and hasty words, to feel your nature 
subdued to what it must work in, to feel within your- 
self the outbursts of petulance, suspicion, impatience, 
envy, discontent ; you could carry with you, every- 
where, the pure and happy mood and frame of the 
Communion-table, its perfect trust in God, its sense 
of His near presence, its kindly regard towards all your 
brethren in sin and sorrow, its holy cheerfulness, its 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



117 



unanxious peace, its brief, transitory glimpse of how 
happy a human soul can be : and then remember that 
all that, and unutterably more, is conveyed to us in 
those words which assure us that the happy souls in 
heaven are always at their very happiest and best; 
forasmuch as there is no time and no place holier or 
happier than other, there ! 

All this, however, is but one truth set out by this 
text. Let us now proceed to an entirely different 
view of it. It is something to remind us of the great 
fact, that blest souls in heaven are lifted above the 
need of the means of grace. They have reached the 
end of all these ; and accordingly the means are needed 
no more. When you have reached the place to which 
you wish to go, you no longer need the steps that 
brought you there. You have got the good of them, 
indeed : but you do not need to use them now. They 
were very well in their time : but their time is gone 

by- 

Now all the means of grace ; and God's house with 
its praises, prayers, and exhortations, among the rest ; 
are just as steps towards heaven. And when the soul 
has reached heaven, their need is over. They have 
done their work : their day is over. And although 
in a true and grand sense heaven is all one grand 
temple, yet, if we understand by temple all that a 
Christian church is now, and here, then it is plain 



118 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



that in heaven no church will be needed, and so none 
will be found. Even in this world we can see that 
the great thing about the house of God is the spiritual 
comfort and profit you get in it : the sense of Christ's 
presence; the breathing of the Holy Spirit on the 
heart ; the lifting up of the soul to God : and all 
these you may have without the mere material church, 
and without the congregation gathered, without the 
hearty psalm, and without the united prayer. On the 
lonely hillside, the believer has felt as real commu- 
nion with Christ, as ever he did at the holy table: 
and while the noblest church, and the stateliest ser- 
vices, without the presence of the Saviour and the 
breathing of the Blessed Spirit, would make but a 
cold and heartless thing ; the poorest place where men 
ever worshipped God, might be glorified by the real- 
ized presence of the Redeemer and the inestimable 
influences of the Comforter, into something that no 
Gothic arches, no jubilant music, no gathered thou- 
sands of worshippers, could ever come near. Now, 
if we can have all that without the church, then we 
can do without the church. And forasmuch as in 
heaven the Saviour is always sensibly present, and 
the Great Sanctifier has done His perfect work; it 
will not matter, though there be no temple there. 
The church, and its services, are no more than the 
means: and when we can have the end without the 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



119 



means, we may well be content. You know the scaf- 
folding which the workmen use in building up some 
tall church-spire, may be very ingenious ; may serve 
its purpose admirably well : but when the spire is 
finished, you do not propose to keep the scaffolding up 
permanently: the confusion of crossing and interlac- 
ing timbers is taken away, and the graceful spire, no 
longer half-concealed by that environment, is left in 
the air alone. And the means of grace, all of them, 
and God's house with the others, are no more than as 
the scaffolding by whose means the soul is edified; — 
and you know the meaning there is in that familiar 
word, — it means built up, — built up as a temple to 
God's glory ; built up in faith and hope and charity. 
And when the glorified soul has reached the highest 
attainments of Christian character, and has always 
within reach the sublimest depths of Christian feel- 
ing and solid enjoyment, — as it has in heaven, then 
the scaffolding by which it was built up to this may 
be taken down ; the means of grace, so needful in 
their time, may be done without, may go. 

And thus you see that in this way of looking at the 
case, the declaration that there is no temple in heaven 
is something to remind us that when the believer has 
attained to glory, he will no longer need the means of 
grace : he will have got beyond these. Strange, to 
think that some of the most precious possessions the 



120 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



Christian has on earth, he cannot have in heaven. 
What more inestimable gift of God than a saving faith 
in Christ, and a cheering hope of glory ? And yet, you 
know, there will be no faith in heaven : it will all be 
sight there. And there will be no hope in heaven : for 
the happy soul there will have reached all it ever hoped 
for. Yes, in heaven, faith has passed into sight, and 
hope into fruition : and it is just in that way that the 
earthly temple, with its Saviour's presence only be- 
lieved in, with its imperfect praises, with its cold and 
wandering prayers, shall be superseded by a state in 
w r hich God will always be worshipped worthily, and 
Christ always seen as He is. It is just as the blossom 
gives place to the fruit ; as the early dawn gives place 
to the perfect day ; that this earth, with its many tem- 
ples, — with its cities with their many spires and towers, 
— with its country landscapes with the parish church 
amid green graves, — shall yield to that Better Country 
where there will be neither churches nor graves ; — 
shall give place to that spireless and domeless Golden 
City, which the kind-hearted Apostle John saw in 
vision ; and concerning which he has put it on record, 
that " he saw no temple there ! " 

I humbly trust, Christian brethren, that we* all know 
by abundant experience what a great blessing God's 
house is to us here. What perfect knowledge of us, 
what kind consideration for us, He had, who appointed 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



121 



that there should be one day in the week on which we 
might turn away from worldly work and thought, and 
think of our immortal souls, and of the great eternity 
before us, and of that death which may be within a step 
of us ; and that there should be one house, amid the 
multitude of those devoted to worldly business and com- 
mon employments, where prayer should be habitually 
made, and the great work be to remember and to pre- 
pare for the unseen world ! And yet, who can have 
failed to think oftentimes, that it is mainly because we 
are the sinful and imperfect creatures we are, that all 
this is so needful to keep religion from being choked out 
in us ? To how great a degree it is our sins, our sor- 
rows, that we have to think of in the house of prayer ! 
God's house is not merely a place for worship and 
praise : it is also a place for instruction and exhorta- 
tion : we come here to be reminded of solemn truths we 
are ready to forget, — to be counselled and warned. 
Now, the preaching of God's Gospel will not be needed 
above. And a great part of prayer will be gone. You 
know that there is no more essential part of prayer in 
this world, whether public or private, than confession of 
sin, and supplication for pardon : as long as you live, 
you will have something new to confess every time you 
pray. Now, these things will not be needed above. 
Neither will prayer for comfort and support under pain, 
sorrow, bereavement, find place above. Half the things 
6 



122 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



we ask for here, we shall not need to ask for there : and 
joyful praise and thanksgiving, here too much neglected, 
will there grow far more frequent and fervent and 
happy things. We go to church weekly, to seek the 
pardon of the week's sin : to wash off the rust of world- 
liness that has accumulated since we last met together : 
to tell God of our burden of care and sorrow, that He 
may send His Holy Spirit to comfort us under it, and 
sanctify us through it. But all these things we shall 
not have to do in Heaven. Oh it is wonderful to think, 
as the believer dies with the words of prayer on his lips, 
what a change will have passed upon prayer before he 
offers it again ! " Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great " : 
" God be merciful to me a sinner ! " " Create in me a 
clean heart " : " Sanctify me by Thy truth " : " I pray, 
not that Thou shouldst take me out of the world, but 
that Thou shouldst keep me from the evil"; the day for 
these prayers will be gone. Yes, it will indeed be " a 
new song " : " Thou art worthy ; for Thou wast slain, 
and hast redeemed us to God by Thy Blood, and we 
shall reign with Thee." " Blessing, and honor, and 
glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever ! " Such will be 
the praises there ! Because God shall have " wiped 
away all tears from their eyes : and there shall be no 
more death, neither sorrow, nor crying ; neither shall 
there be any more pain ; for the former things have 
passed away ! " 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



123 



Christian friends, we need the means of grace yet : 
how fast grace would die out in us but for them ! It 
would be a sad thing for us if there were no temple 
here. Many a time, perhaps, we have come to God's 
house with the taint of worldliness creeping over us : 
and got a new impulse in the better way. Many a 
time, perhaps, we have come with hearts burdened by a 
special weight of care, anxiety, or sorrow ; and been 
enabled to lay that burden aside, and to feel free. The 
better life would fade away in us fast, if we had not 
God's word to read, God's footstool to go to in prayer, 
the Communion-table with its special warmth of heart 
and tenderness of association, and with its feeding by 
faith on the bread and water of life. Do you not feel, 
my friends, how much you owe to these things : how 
impossible it is for us, as we are, to do without them ? 
It is well said in the Shorter Catechism, that " To es- 
cape the wrath and curse* of God due to us for sin, God 
requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto 
life, with the diligent use of all the outward means 
whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of re- 
demptionr Yes, let us use these diligently : grace can 
no more grow without them here, than these fields and 
trees around us could grow green without sunshine and 
rain. And let us use none more faithfully, none more 
earnestly, none with more serious preparation, none 
with a deeper sense of the solemnity of what we do, 



124 



NO TEMPLE m HEAVEN. 



none with a more urgent, importunate prayer for the 
blessing of the Kind and Holy Spirit without Whom we 
can do nothing, — Who is Himself the essence and the 
sum of all the means of grace, — than this most com- 
forting, sanctifying, elevating, and saving institution of 
the Worship and the House of God. For in truth, we 
need it yet. We need every drop of the divine dew, 
every beam of the better Sun, every breath of the 
Blessed Spirit. Some day, we may do without these : 
but that day is not yet ; and the Place is beyond the 
grave ! If, without the sermon, we could have all the 
counsel, all the comfort, all the impulse in the right 
way, of the most simply earnest that ever was preached : 
if, without the prayer, the peace and light and life could 
come down from God to our hearts, that ever was 
drawn down by the most hearty prayer : if, without 
the praise, our spirit could be lifted up to a devotion 
never reached through the sublimest hymn : if, with 
the Church in the dust, we could get all the good we 
ever got at the holy table or in the house of God : then 
let church and prayer and praise and sermon go ! But 
these things will never be so in this world. There is 
but one state in which the soul can do without the 
means of grace : and that is when it is glorified, and 
perfect in holiness. There is but one place where the 
house of prayer will not be felt as the most restful and 
home-like spot for the weary spirit : and that Place is 



NO TEMPLE IN HEAVEN. 



125 



the heavenly City of which St. John certifies us, that he 
" saw no temple there ! " 

And so you have seen, my friends, that it is not dis- 
couraging but cheering, this glimpse given us by my 
text of the Place where we, who confess ourselves 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth, shall be at last at 
home. You thought, perhaps, that even in Heaven you 
would miss the church. When you feel how great a 
thing it is here ; how large a part of our life ; you are 
disposed to fancy that it would be a blank, to miss it 
there. But you have seen that in the City where there 
is " no temple," there is still all the good you ever found 
in church: all the sense of the Saviour's presence and 
the Spirit's influence that made the church so dear. It 
was not the building : it was not the music : it was not 
the sermon : it was not the prayers : but it was the holy 
communion, the elevation and calm of spirit, to which 
all these conduced, that gave its sacred charm to the 
house of prayer. And if you have known these here, O 
how much loftier and happier degrees of them await 
you in Heaven ! No sins to confess there : no poor 
wandering thoughts, going away to your cares at home, 
to your sick child's little white face, to your anxieties 
for the future : but a perfect, unanxious satisfaction of 
soul such as never, never can be known on earth. And 
more than this : if it be true that in one sense there is 
no temple in heaven, it is because in a sense most real 



126 



NO TEMPLE EN HEAVEN. 



it is all one great temple : every corner hallowed by 
Christ's Beatific Presence ; every act done in it an act 
of worship and praise. No going down, there, from the 
mount of ordinances : no exchanging holy communion 
for the poor cares of this mortal life ! 

But I pause upon that sublime Threshold. Let us 
not pretend to describe what it is God's purpose we 
should, here, only most imperfectly know. Yet we 
know enough. There is one blessed fact certain about 
the Better Country and the Golden City : 

Our knowledge of that life is small : 
The eye of faith is dim : 
• But 't is enough that Christ knows all, 

And we shall be with Him! 



VIII. 



ALL SAINTS. 

" All Saints." — Ephes. vi. 18. 

LL SAINTS: that is, all Christians. In the 
New Testament, as you know, the word con- 
stantly occurs ; and the word Saint always 
means Christian, and never means anything else. All 
Saints, when St. Paul wrote this verse, meant all 
Christians. They are all "beloved of God, called to 
be Saints." They are all 44 sanctified in Christ Jesus, 
called to be Saints." The word Saint, in Holy Scrip- 
ture, means Christian : no less and no more. 

You all know that in our common use, the word 
has changed its meaning. It has come to bear a cer- 
tain technical sense. Christians specially distinguished 
for piety, — for service in the Redeemer's cause, — 
sometimes for mere foolish and useless austerities and 
self-inflicted tortures, have been promoted to the rank 
of Saint by emphasis. We commonly speak of the 
Apostles in this way: if we would, we could hardly 
help saying St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John: and the 




123 



ALL SAINTS. 



name is very generally given to eminent Christians 
of whom we read in the New Testament. And it 
is curious, how thoroughly Saint is a Christian title : 
one, that is, confined to those who have been mem- 
bers of the Church of Christ since it was manifestly 
founded by our Blessed Saviour. ^Ve never speak 
of St. Moses, St. Elijah, or St. Isaiah, however fitly the 
word might apply to them. Then you know how, 
coming down the stream of time, we find the name 
of Saint ascribed by common consent to men and 
women who are not mentioned in the Bible : to per- 
sons who were not inspired, who wrought no miracles, 
who never had looked upon the living face of our 
Master, nor heard His voice. Nor need we say but 
that many among these, if we may credit their story, 
did well deserve the name. Some certainly did not. 
The person commonly called St. George was nothing 
more than a fraudulent army contractor ; and St. Dun- 
stan was as wicked a hypocrite as this world ever saw. 
But St. Thomas a Kempis, who has left us his holy 
book concerning the Imitation of Christ, did himself 
seek to follow his Master fully : and the good man 
whose name it is pleasant to think this church bears, 
was indeed a Saint; that is, a true Christian, if ever 
there was one. You know, there are people who 
object to speaking of even St. Matthew and St. Paul, 
and much more of St. Bernard; but I may well take 



ALL SAINTS. 



129 



for granted that none in this congregation are so nar- 
row-minded and irreverent as to see any fault in that 
pleasing and venerable practice in the Christian church. 
And although in severe logic, there is no special mean- 
ing in calling a Protestant place of worship by a saint's 
name : forasmuch as we do not dedicate our churches 
to anything except the spiritual worship of God through 
the one Mediator; and forasmuch, too, as we do not 
ask the intercession of any Saint either in Church or 
elsewhere : yet most of us, I believe, will feel that 
there is something pleasing in the ancient usage, uni- 
versal over Christendom ; and most of us will regret 
that tasteless fashion which we sometimes remark, of 
calling a church by the name of the street or place in 
which it stands. 

But you will easily believe that what has now been 
said, is only by way of introduction to something of 
infinitely greater practical moment: to something be- 
yond the province of curiosity or of taste ; and to 
something as to which there can be no difference of 
opinion among true Christians, by whatever name 
known among men. I invite you, my friends, this 
day, to think of All Saints, in the solemn sense in 
which the words stand in the text, and in the New 
Testament : I desire that we may think for our warn- 
ing, for our encouragement, for our strong consolation, 
of the grand characteristics which are common to all 
6* i 



130 



ALL SAINTS. 



true Christians. God grant that they may be ours, 
brethren : and God grant, too, that we may be willing 
heartily to recognize them wherever we find them, 
though it may be in people differing from us in a 
hundred lesser matters, but at one with us in those 
great things which concern salvation. And in these 
sad days of needless separation among those who all 
look to Christ as their Saviour and to heaven as their 
home, how we should feel ourselves drawn together 
in a sublime unity, as we look away from the miserable 
little details on which good Christians differ and about 
which they quarrel, to the grand and saving verities 
about which all true Christians agree ! 

Now, every one knows, that when a human being 
is converted to God, and enters the Christian fold, 
even though he be regenerated by the Holy Ghost, 
and made a new creature in Christ Jesus, he does not 
get rid of his old natural disposition and temperament, 
nor of the training of all his life hitherto: even that 
evil part of his being which Scripture calls the Flesh, 
and the Old Man, is never entirely gone in this world ; 
and still more, those special bents and peculiarities of 
thinking, feeling, and liking, which make the man's idio- 
syncrasy, his special temper and disposition, — remain, 
in him, in very great degree. He has become a Chris- 
tian man; but he does not cease to be an individual 
human being. And all attempts to make men think 



ALL SAINTS. 



131 



alike, in regard of anything in religion except what is 
properly vital, have been wretched failures. Every 
one knows how a certain great monarch, who ruled a 
great portion of Europe through a most critical period 
of its religious history, and who had bent all his ener- 
gies to the task of compelling men to agree on points 
as to which God had made them to differ, got a new 
light upon that matter in the evening of his life. He 
was fond of clockwork : and had a number of valuable 
time-pieces. Such machinery was less perfect in those 
days than it is in ours : and the great emperor found 
he could not get half a dozen of his clocks to keep 
time together, or to agree in what they said as to the 
precise moment of the day. "Ah," said he, "when 
all the skill of the best artificers cannot make a few 
clocks agree together, how vain to seek to compel 
millions of men to agree ! " Now, that great monarch, 
finding that men would differ for all he could do, seems 
to have thought there was nothing for it but giving 
up the battle in despair. He saw that the Church of 
Rome's way of reaching unity would not do ; he saw 
that it was quite vain to think that all professing Chris- 
tians, with their endlessly various dispositions and tem- 
peraments, could ever be compelled (if they retained 
spiritual life at all, and were not fashioned into mere 
machines) to think exactly alike upon every little de- 
tail : there would be people who preferred a liturgy, and 



132 



ALL SAINTS. 



people who preferred free prayer : there would be peo- 
ple who liked Presbytery best, and others who liked 
Episcopacy best ; people who found it suited them to 
worship in a grand church, where art had done her best, 
and people who found they could worship more heart- 
ily and undistractedly in a plain one ; and finding that 
all the burnings and beheadings and tortures of perse- 
cution could not secure entire uniformity, he concluded 
that in God's Church there could be no unity at all. 
But as for us, brethren, we have been led (as we 
humbly trust) by God's Holy Spirit of light, to a better 
way. We have been led to the true Protestant way, 
which is just the New Testament way. We have been 
taught, let us trust, that the true Christian oneness con- 
sists in agreeing on great and vital points ; and as for 
points which are not vital, agreeing to differ upon these : 
and in feeling that we have a true essential unity after 
all. O, the Christian church has its lamentable divis- 
ions, working incalculable ill: and it has its inevitable 
diversities and separations, which must be in a world 
where circumstances often thrust the best friends apart, 
and whence the noblest and worthiest members of the 
church are gone : where the kind Saviour welcomes 
the little child to His fold, in which the old disciple 
with his white hairs has been through a long lifetime ; 
where the rich and poor meet together; where is 
a great multitude, which no man can number, of all 



ALL SAINTS. 



133 



nations and kindreds and people and tongues. But all 
are alike in this, that they are pardoned for Christ's 
sake : all are alike in this, that they are sanctified and 
comforted by the Blessed and Holy Spirit of God ; all 
are alike in this, that they are going to heaven as their 
home : all are alike in this, that they are numbered in 
the great company of All Saints. 

You will easily see, brethren, that when we cast aside 
all non-essential things, and try to get at the vital and 
needful characteristics of all saints, these essential char- 
acteristics are not many. There are human beings who 
would make them very many, if they could : who would 
hardly recognize, as belonging to the great company of 
all saints, any one who does not belong to their little 
sect : any one who will not sound their especial shibbo- 
leth : any one who will not use their stock theological 
phrases ; and even any one who refuses to cultivate cer- 
tain peculiar tones of voice, which they ignorantly fancy 
indicate a peculiar sanctity. There was a man, and a 
good man too, who declared he could not recognize as a 
Christian any who did not agree with his views as to 
the appointment of ministers to vacant charges ; and 
another, who could not believe that any one was a 
Christian who refused to subscribe to a certain good 
work of which he was the zealous advocate. But let 
us be thankful, my friends, that we have God's blessed 
word to go to : and that when we look there for infor 



134 



ALL SAINTS. 



mation as to what are the characteristics of all saints, 
we find them so easy to be understood, so easy to be 
remembered, and so very few. When we cast aside all 
the things which are immaterial, we shall find that there 
remain just two which are vital : two which must be 
about every Christian : two which are essential marks 
of all saints. And these are, that they are all pardoned 
through the great atonement of Christ ; and that they 
are all sanctified by the working of the Holy Spirit. 
Old and young, rich and poor, white and black, differ- 
ing in language, country, disposition, everything, — all 
saints are alike in these two things. Every other char- 
acteristic of the believer is included in these, or grows 
out of these. 

My friends, you remember what Christ took for 
granted when he began to preach. He did not say it 
in so many words, but all His preaching went upon that 
assumption. The thing He took for granted was, that 
every man is a sinner. For " He began to preach, and 
to say, Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
He took it for certain that He never could go wrong in 
commanding every one he met to repent : and repent- 
ance just means the feeling and doing of a sinner when 
he is made to know really that he is one. So starting 
from the great and solemn fact, that every human being 
is a lost sinner, estranged from God by sin, and merit- 
ing God's wrath for his sin, the great sacrifice of Christ 



ALL SAINTS. 



135 



was intended to " save men from their sins." Now a 
saint, which is the same thing as a Christian, just means 
a saved sinner : a human being saved from his sins. 
And you know what is implied in being saved from sin. 
It means being saved from the punishment of sin, — 
which is the thing meant when we speak of being par- 
doned, or justified. And it means also being saved 
from the power of sin, — which is the thing meant when 
we speak of being regenerated and sanctified. Every 
one remembers the plain and clear statement in the 
Shorter Catechism : " They that are effectually called," 
that is, they who are brought by the Holy Spirit to 
Christ, and made into true Christians, — " do in this 
life partake of Justification, Adoption, and Sanctifi ca- 
tion ; and the several benefits which in this life do 
either accompany or flow from them." We may regard 
Adoption into God's family of saved souls, as one of the 
benefits accompanying the others : and we get to the 
kernel of the matter, we reach the essential character- 
istics of all saints, in these two things, that they are all 
Justified, and all Sanctified. Everything else either 
grows out of these two things ; or, is not vital. 

Just a few words upon each of these. 

All saints, that is, all Christians, are alike in this, 
that they are Justified : that is, Pardoned. Pardoned 
of God's free grace, and only for Christ's sake ; and 
this through a saving faith in Him. Christian expe- 



136 



ALL SAINTS. 



rience is no doubt most varied ; and the ways in which 
God makes us feel our sins and our need of forgiveness 
of them, are many. But still, there is one great outline 
of the course through which all saved souls are led : 
They are all, in some way, made to feel that they are 
sinful and helpless, — that they deserve God's anger, 
and that they can do nothing to take it away : then they 
are made to know in their heart that Christ is able to 
help them, and willing to help them : and then they are 
enabled by the Holy Spirit to believe in Christ, — to 
trust their souls to Him, — to cast themselves, without 
the least reservation or hanging back, upon Him. And 
even as they do this, they are pardoned. The dismal 
old record of transgression and shortcoming that stood 
against them in the book of God's remembrance, fades 
away. They are justified freely through His grace, 
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." 

Now 3 my friends, in order that we may quite under- 
stand this great fact, that every Christian is justified ; 
that is. is pardoned for Christ's sake : it is not at all 
needful that we should go into the metaphysics of the 
Atonement. Many a humble Christian feels the burden 
of sin, and feels the blesse-d relief which comes of be- 
holding the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of 
the world ; who yet could give you but a very imperfect 
account of the rationale of the great Atonement. A 
man may quite well know how to take advantage of the 



ALL SAINTS. 137 

working of a great machinery, who could give you but 
a very lame description of the precise fashion in which 
all the parts of that machinery co-operate towards its 
great end. Yet it is fit that in these days of uncertain 
sound as to the gravest Christian verities, we should 
call to mind how our Saviour takes away the burden of 
sin from his justified people. As for that load of guilt, 
which looks so huge and terrible to the soul convinced 
of its true state by the Holy Spirit, He takes it away, 
by bearing the punishment due for our sins : — by offer- 
ing Himself, truly and actually, as a propitiatory sacri- 
fice : a sacrifice so wonderful, so precious, so accepted 
by God, that it can blot sin out ; separate between the 
soul and its responsibilities : open a way in which the 
just and holy God can receive as innocent, can adopt 
into His family, the sinner, cleared utterly from all the 
burden of his sins. Repent of sin, brethren ; and God's 
Spirit waits to help you to repent : Believe in Christ, — 
and God's Spirit waits to help you to believe : and no 
writing stands against you in God's book any more. 
God is content to look upon you, and to see you clear 
and blameless, as Adam before he fell. " Being justi- 
fied by faith, Ave have peace with God, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." " There is therefore now no con- 
demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." " He 
hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin : 
that we might be made the righteousness of God in 
Him." 



138 



ALL SAINTS. 



My friends, we all profess to be Christian people : 
how does it stand with us as to this first grand mark 
of all saints ? We cannot open God's book, and see 
whether our names stand there as numbered with the 
Forgiven. And yet, we are not left in blank uncer- 
tainty. Do we deeply feel our need of the good part in 
Christ ? Then remember that wonderfully comforting 
declaration in the standards of our national Church, 
which people who know little about them sometimes 
think so stern ; that as for the good part in Christ, in 
God's view he hath it, who is deeply convinced of his 
want of it. The perilous symptom is in his case, who is 
quite satisfied with himself ; and does not think himself 
so great a sinner after all. But O brethren, if we have 
been made to see our lost estate by nature ; — 'J we 
have been made to feel that if we are ever forgiven, it 
must be for our Blessed Redeemer's sake ; — if we have 
been helped, by something that never originated in our 
own sinful hearts, to go to Him who holds out the arms 
of His love to all, and cast the care of our weary, unsat- 
isfied, conscience -stricken souls upon Him ; though only 
with that short prayer, spoken first by the poor publi- 
can, but just the very fittest utterance upon the lips of 
every human being, — that true universal prayer, that 
" God be merciful to me a sinner " : then, brethren, we 
may humbly cherish, not perhaps a confident assurance, 
but surely a good hope through grace. For our 



ALL SAINTS. 



139 



Blessed Saviour's own words are, " Him that cometh 
unto Me, I will in no wise cast out v : and we remem- 
ber these words unto His servants, upon which he has 
caused us to hope ! 

And now, as for the other great and essential charac- 
teristic of all believers : They are all sanctified by the 
Holy Spirit of God. Through his regenerating influ- 
ence, the Christian is made a new creature in Christ 
Jesus : the perverse nature is replaced by a better and 
purer : a new heart is created within him, and a right 
spirit is renewed ; and then, day by day, in the pro- 
gressive work of sanctification, the remaining evil is 
further sapped, and subdued ; and the gracious fruits of 
the Spirit are made to appear, — the love, joy, peace, 
and all blessed graces, which never would have grown 
in the native soil of the heart. It is a longer work, this, 
you know, than our justification : it is a work, the best 
believer knows, never fully carried out in this life : 
much remaining corruption lingers ; and it is the most 
advanced Christian who feels this most deeply. But 
still, the work is doing, and on the whole always pro- 
gressing, which will leave us at the last with souls un- 
vexed by evil and temptation, as Adam's when he knew 
no sin. 

All this is beyond question the teaching of God's 
Holy Word. " God hath chosen you to salvation 
through sanctification of the Spirit." We are to "put 



140 



ALL SAIXTS. 



on the new man, which after God is created in right- 
eousness and true holiness." " If any man be in Christ 
he is a new creature." " Our old man is crucified with 
him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that 
henceforth we should not serve sin." There can be no 
doubt that the Catechism is right, when it tells us that 
all Christians do in this life partake not merely of Jus- 
tification, but of Sanctification. They are not only par- 
doned, and so get the right to enter heaven when they 
go from earth ; but they are renewed and made holy, 
and so become fit to enter heaven when they go from 
earth ; which mere forgiveness would not make them. 

My friends, I greatly fear, that this plain test that 
comes so home ; — that this characteristic of all believ- 
ers, which is so easy a one to understand, — must fall 
very sadly upon the heart of many professing Chris- 
tians : yes, and comes with something of mournful up- 
braiding upon the heart of all professing Christians. 
The theory, the sound doctrine of the matter, is very 
clear : but alas, to what a sad extent it is theory : how 
imperfectly it is exemplified in actual life ! As for being 
justified, if that is done at all, it is done perfectly: that 
is God's work, and there is no failure nor inrperfection 
there. But as for being sanctified, as for growing better, 
as for putting down sin more effectually, as for doing our 
duty more faithfully, — why, there is something of our 
work in all that : God's Spirit will work in us, but we 



ALL SAINTS. 



141 



must work too : and O how the sad imperfection of all 
human work looks out here ! Justified, is what, if we 
be Christian people, we hope we may say we are. Sanc- 
tified, in any worthy measure, in any sense that deserves 
the name, — it is not so truly what we are, as what we 
ought to be ! O that we were all striving after it more 
faithfully, every day ! Here it is, that the Church of 
Christ is such a stumbling-block to the world : in the 
miserably imperfect degree in which this great charac- 
teristic of all saints appears in very many professing 
Christians. Yea, there are people, making a very loud 
profession of religion, in whom it is hard to say that 
there is any trace of it at all. And yet, forasmuch as 
justification is invisible, w T hile a holy life and a Chris- 
tian conversation are what all men can see, if they are 
there to be seen, it is just here that we have the great 
practical test whether we are Christians or not so. " By 
their fruits ye shall know them " : know others ; and 
what is of far more consequence, know yourself. If you 
are in doubt whether you are forgiven, whether you are 
justified, here is the way to settle that doubt : — Are you 
in any measure sanctified ? If you feel in yourself that 
you are thoroughly worldly of spirit, that you have no 
liking for God's service and for heavenly things, no ha- 
tred for sin and no desire after a holier and purer and 
kindlier nature, then you have grave reason to fear that, 
manifestly lacking one mark of all Christians, you lack 



142 



ALL SAINTS. 



the other ; and that, not being sanctified, you are not 
justified. But if } t ou have some good reason to trust 
that, by God's Blessed Spirit, there has been kindled 
within you the spark of a better life ; — if you feel a lit- 
tle of that faith that overcomes the world and that trusts 
all to Christ ; — if you have been endued with a will and 
desire to renounce and withstand your own evil affec- 
tions, and with a longing for God's righteousness and 
the keeping of his Commandments ; — then, with all 
your frailty and unworthiness, surely you have some 
measure of that, w T hich never arose naturally in your 
breast, but which you may humbly yet resolutely attrib- 
ute to the working of the Holy Ghost, of Whom and 
through Whom is everything good that ever was thought, 
or felt, or done, by human being. Far, very far from 
being what you desire to be, you have yet attained 
something which you never would have attained if you 
had been left to yourself : and praying for more grace, 
and knowing to whom to look for it, you humbly trust 
that the work of sanctification is begun in you : that the 
visible mark of a saved soul being (in a lowly degree) 
present in you, you may cherish the sure though humble 
hope that the invisible characteristic is present too : 
that being in some measure sanctified, you are forgiven. 
The grand evidence that a man's name is written in 
heaven, is, that he should be striving to lead a heavenly 
life on earth. 



ALL SAINTS. 



143 



And in these two things of which we have thought, 
my Christian friends, you see the characteristics of the 
great assemblage of the best and worthiest of our race ; 
the grand Church of All Saints. Everything that has 
ever appeared, of excellence, purity, and beauty in the 
noblest of the members of the great Household of Faith, 
is included in these, or grows out of these. The glori- 
ous company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of 
the Prophets, the noble army of Martyrs, never mani- 
fested anything of the sublime, the tender, or the heroic, 
which went beyond these two great things, which in 
their essence belong to the humblest that bear the name 
of Jesus. The most excellent gifts of God's grace, are 
just those which are given most freely; and though it 
may have pleased Him, Who does everything right, to 
bestow on others gifts of usefulness, and inspiration, 
which he has denied to us : though He has made some 
Apostles and some Evangelists, and some humble be- 
lievers living out their life of toil and struggle which 
hardly any know, still free as the wide bounds of the 
Church of Christ are the most precious gifts of all, — 
the blood of Christ that cleanseth from all sin, and the 
inestimable communications of the Blessed and Holy 
Spirit. Such honor, such gifts, have all His saints ! 
Yea, all His saints : those who yet live amid the mani- 
fold labors and cares of this life, — and those who have 
gone to the rest and peace of the better world. For wo 



1U 



ALL SAINTS. 



are to remember that the Church of All Saints has but 
a fraction of its glorious extent here on this side of time. 
You remember how the most thoughtful among the hea- 
then spake of a good man's death, in a phrase that was 
a dim, blind foreshadowing of the sublime truth we 
know. He has gone, they said, to the majority ; — gone 
to where there are more ! Yes, the believer, passing 
within the veil, does indeed go to where there are more ; 
— to that general assembly and church of the first-born, 
which year by year is taking to itself, from our firesides, 
from our pulpits, from every place but our hearts, those 
whom God has appointed to sit down with Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob there : oftentimes in the prime of 
their powers and their usefulness, — oftentimes too early 
for us, but never too early for them. And well may we 
look with interest, Christian friends, towards the Golden 
City; for the best of the Church is there! They 
dropped the last trace of earthly sinfulness and imperfec- 
tion, crossing the dark river ; and they have reached to 
heights of bliss and purity of which we can know but lit- 
tle here. Yet still they have not got beyond the two 
grand characteristics : for they " have washed their robes, 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, There- 
fore are they before the throne of God " : and all their 
meetness for that rest is of the operation of the Blessed 
Spirit, who begins and perfects our better life. Surely, 
surely, there is something to encourage and cheer, in 



ALL SAINTS. 



145 



thinking of the great Church to which we belong; in 
thinking how God, in His grace, has led our fathers 
who have crossed the river : in drawing hope from that 
thought, that He will be with us by His Blessed Spirit, 
and keep us in all ways that we go, and bring us 
at last to that land: and feeling meanwhile, that it is 
enough for us poor sinners, if Christ will but take us ; 
and number us among " the least of ' All Saints ' 99 1 



7 



IX. 



WORK. 

" Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening/' 

— Psalm civ. 23. 
u And to every man his work." — St. Mark xiii. 34. 

VERY ONE knows what is meant by work: 
most of us know it well by much experience. 
The grammarian will tell you that work 
means prolonged exertion of body or of mind, to attain 
some desired end. That is work. It implies conscious 
efforts ; — the strain and stretch of mind or body. 
Even the most slothful are sometimes constrained to 
work ; and very many human beings do very little 
else than work, through all their waking hours. They 
must do so, to earn food and clothing and shelter for 
themselves and their children. If they did not work 
they would have to starve. We wrest our livelihood 
from the elements and from society, by labor. And 
even those people who are (what some would think) so 
favored by fortune that they need not work at all un- 
less they please, have oftentimes found that it is so 
miserable a thing to be idle, — that it makes the mind 




WORK. 



147 



so morbid to be idle, — and that a perfectly idle human 
being is so thoroughly out of harmony with all this 
busy, active universe of things, — that they have, by 
their own free choice, worked and labored as hard as 
ever mortal man did. 

Now of course, God's Word has something to day 
about this thing which is such a necessity to most; 
and which is the choice of the worthiest among the 
few to whom it is not a necessity. And I have taken 
as the foundation of some thoughts on work, as it is 
and ought to be to Christian men and women, two short 
texts : one from the Old Testament, and the other from 
the New. The New Testament, as you know, is an ad- 
vance upon the Old : it gives us clearer and fuller light : 
and very manifestly is that so here. 

There never were words more certainly and univer- 
sally true, than those of the Psalmist. Day by day the 
sun arises, the darkness of night goes, and then " man 
goeth forth to his work, and to his labor, until the even- 
ing.' , As sure as the blank daylight struggles through 
wintry clouds and rain, and even before it comes : as 
sure as the morning sunshine of summer brightens 
green fields and green trees: man in town and coun- 
try, willingly or unwillingly, cheerfully or despond- 
ingly, takes to his work, hand-work or head-work ; and 
with less or more of intermission, toils on till the even- 
ing bids him cease. This has been well called the 



148 



WORK. 



work-day world. It has indeed its blinks of leisure 
and recreation ; though most men, to retain the healthy 
spring of body and mind, ought to have a great deal 
more of these : and there is one blessed day, the inesti- 
mable gift of perfect understanding of us and thorough 
sympathy with us, on which common labors cease : and 
which cannot be too carefully kept free from the intru- 
sion of work-day thoughts and cares. Yet in the main, 
you may read in the Psalmist's words " the story of our 
lives from year to year." 

There is an advance upon all that, in our text from 
the Xew Testament. There is fuller light : there is the 
essence of exhortation : there is precious comfort. TVe 
are not told who is the author of the Psalm : but who- 
ever he may have been, he speaks as one who simply 
records a fact. — which many people would think a sad 
one. For there is no doubt that there are thoughtless 
people, and overdriven people, who have some vague 
impression that it would be a fine thing to be put in a 
place in life in which they would have nothing to do ; 
and in which, accordingly, they would do nothing. But 
there is a different face altogether put upon work, by 
the words of our Blessed Saviour which form our New 
Testament text. There is something in them to remind 
us of the entire Gospel teaching about work and labor. 
They remind us that God appoints every Christian his 
work in this life : it may not be the work the Christian 



WORK. 



149 



likes best, — it may even not be the work the Chris- 
tian would do best, — yet still it is the right thing for 
him to do. And these words remind us, likewise, that 
we ought to do all our work, for Christ; as for His 
sake ; faithfully and well, because He gives it us : and 
that He will give us grace to do it worthily, — that He 
will help us in it, sympathize with us through it all, and 
send us His gracious Holy Spirit to support and comfort 
us in it : and, finally, that He has provided a glorious 
rest and reward, after all the toil is past. 

And so, my friends, in thinking of work at this time, 
let us combine the Old Testament and the New Testa- 
ment view of it : let us think of our work, not merely as 
a necessity of our lot, and a*condition of our being, — 
but as something appointed to us by our God and Sav- 
iour, and appointed to us in love and mercy because it 
is the right thing for us, — and as something we are to 
do for His sake. There is something sacred about 
worthy work : you remember how even a wise heathen 
said, that " To work is to pray." You hear people 
sometimes talk about the curse of labor: and no doubt 
they were words of doom which God spake when he 
said to our first parent, and through him to all of us, 
" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return to the ground." But when we remember that 
God's promise to all true Christians is, that He will 
make " all things work together for good " to them, 



150 



WORK. 



surely it is wrong and ungrateful in us to speak of the 
thing to which God has appointed that all Christian 
people should give the greater part of their life, as a 
curse. It may have been a curse once : it may be a 
curse yet to those who do not take it from the hand of 
God ; and doubtless there is much that is depressing 
and evil about over-work : but work, in itself, is not a 
curse to the man for whose eternal good it is sanctified ; 
and when we look at that New Testament text, — when 
we think what Kindest Heart and Hand have set us our 
task, — when we think it was our Blessed, kindly, sym- 
pathizing Saviour who " gives to every man his work," 
— O what a change passes on its very nature ! Labor, 
whether of brain, or of bone and sinew, is something 
more than a painful necessity. It has been well said, — 
said by a poet and in a poem indeed, — but poets some- 
times have intuitions of great truths, which though ex- 
pressed in few words, are worth a great many pages 
of ordinary theology, — that labor is at once the symbol 
of man's punishment and the secret of man's happiness. 
And it has well been said too that the Gospel does not 
abolish labor, but gives it a new and nobler aspect. 
" The Gospel abolishes labor much in the same way as 
it abolished death : it leaves the thing, but it changes its 
nature." And some of you may remember how it was 
just this deep conviction that gave an influence which 
acted like a charm, to a great and good man who influ- 



WORK. 



151 



enced for good probably a greater number of immortal 
souls than any other man in this century. A friend has 
recorded that the principle which lay at the foundation 
of all he did, was a humble, profound and most religious 
consciousness, "that work is the appointed calling of 
man on earth, the end for which his various faculties 
were given, the element in which his nature is ordained 
to develop itself, and in which his progressive advance 
toward heaven is to lie." 

It is not for us to pretend to understand all the rea- 
sons upon which our God and Saviour goes. Yet it will 
be comforting and profitable, if so the Blessed and Holy 
Spirit of all truth vouchsafe to guide us, to think of 
some of the good consequences which follow from God's 
decree that as day after day returns, man must "go 
forth unto his work, and to his labor, until the evening " : 
some of the benefits and blessings which come of this 
fact, that our Saviour does not intend that his people 
should drag out an idle and aimless life in this world, but 
on the contrary, hath given " to every man his work." 

And one good end served by work, and served most 
effectually when work is felt most hard and painful, is 
this : it all goes to keep us in mind that we are fallen 
creatures, — to keep us in mind of the evil of sin. 
Now, even if man had not fallen, he would have had 
to work. The primal curse was not simply of work: 



152 



WORK. 



it was of painful work : of work when we do not wish 
it, — when we do not feel equal to it, — when we are 
weary and weak, — when we work under pressure, 
and of necessity, to gain the daily bread for our- 
selves and our families. Man, in short, was at first in- 
tended for work ; and afterwards, when he fell, doomed 
to work. And there can be no question at all, that 
however different a thing work might have been had 
man continued innocent, now a very great part of 
all the work that is done over the face of the world is 
painful work, — forced work, — work done by those who 
have barely strength and spirit for it, — work done un- 
der the spur of necessity, and to earn the means of sub- 
sistence, — work that would not be done if it could be 
done without. O what weary, jaded, spiritless men " go 
forth" on many mornings "to their work, and their 
labor, until the evening " ! How often all of you, who 
have reached middle age, have gone through hard work 
when you very little fit for it ! Many are the pages, 
which have been written with a feverish, throbbing 
brain, and a trembling, hot hand. Many are the col- 
umns of figures, which have been added up with weary 
eyes, and a confused head. Many are the stitches that 
have been sewn "with fingers weary and worn, with 
eyelids heavy and red." My friends, what is all that 
meant to teach us? You never would have known 
painful work, but for sin. Now, if there be a thing of 



WORK. 



153 



which we want daily proof, of which we need daily to 
be reminded, it is the evil of sin. There is not a thing 
we are so ready to forget. There is not a thing that we 
find it so difficult to realize and bring home to us. And 
yet, there are few things that it is so important for us to 
remember and feel : for unless we in some measure un- 
derstand how evil, how ruinous, how bad a thing sin is, 
we shall never heartily go to that Blessed Saviour who 
"saves his people from their sins." Do we need a daily 
remembrancer of the evil of sin ? Then we have it in 
the daily necessity of work. Every time the scholar 
sits down to his work, jaded and weary, and reluctantly 
forces himself to what he shrinks from, — in all that 
there is something to remind him of the evil of sin. 
Every time the laborer, stiffened and sore, rises from his 
poor bed, and in rain and cold goes out to the field to his 
work, — there is what should remind him of the evil of 
sin. The distorted form of the miner, laboring in peril 
and darkness that we may have our cheerful fires ; the 
stiffened limbs of the sailor, drenched with the wintry 
spray ; the lined face, the gray hair, the frail unmuscular 
body which speak of the over-driven brain ; what do all 
these remind us of, but that sin is bitterly hateful in the 
sight of God ? Sin brought all suffering, and all suffer- 
ing should remind us of the evil of sin. 

A second reason why our Saviour has set " to every 
7* 



154 



WORK. 



man his work," doubtless is, that in so doing he provided 
effectually for the health and sound estate of our bodies 
and our minds. 

We cannot be happy when we are idle. No doubt, 
w T hen we have been for a long time oppressed by ex- 
treme labor, it is, for a little while, a pure enjoyment 
simply to sit still and rest. But that will not last. God 
has made us so, that it cannot last The machine, body 
and soul, is made for working, and in a little, the appe- 
tite for occupation revives again. Do you not all re- 
member how, when you were children, it was just the 
most irksome thing possible to feel that you had " noth- 
ing to do " ? What a weary trouble you may see in the 
face of the little child that comes and tells you that I 
And it is so with grown-up people too, A French 
writer said, with the vivacity characteristic of his nation, 
that we commonly think of idleness as one of the beati- 
tudes of heaven ; but we ought rather to think of it as 
one of the miseries of hell. It has often struck me, that 
our minds are something like that being for which, ac- 
cording to the legend of the middle ages, a certain great 
magician was bound to provide occupation, under the 
penalty of being torn in pieces. Our minds do, as it 
were, come to us, and ask us to give them something to 
do ; and if we do not give them something to do, they 
will make us miserable. There is no more wretched 
condition than that ennui, that loss of all interest and 



WORK. 



155 



healthful energy, that comes of an idle life. O let us 
wear out, brethren, rather than rust out ! There is no- 
body less to be envied than people who may do nothing 
if they like. Very likely there are many of us who 
would be lazy enough if we had it in our power : let us 
thank God that He has saved us from that temptation. 
Let us bless our kind, considerate Saviour, Who hardly 
ever did us a kinder turn, though we may sometimes 
think it severe, than when He bade us daily " go forth 
unto our work, and our labor, until the evening " : — 
than when " knowing our frame " so well, He set " to 
every man his work " ! 

But there is far more good about that decree of our 
Saviour than merely this. No doubt, it is a worthy 
end, and one that our Saviour, who is also our Creator, 
would not think beneath Him to hold in view, to make 
life contented and cheerful. And honest, faithful work, 
done to the very best of our ability, tends strongly to do 
that. There is a cheerfulness and satisfaction in looking 
back upon a task earnestly and faithfully done : our 
Master has known the feeling Himself : as the Prophet 
wrote, " He shall see of the travail of His soul, and 
shall be satisfied." And there is a keen relish which 
diligent toil gives to the hours or days of needful recre- 
ation. But there is better about honest work than that. 
Work, hard yet not excessive, has a wonderful power to 
promote a sober and healthful temper of mind, free alike 



156 



WORK. 



from extravagant views and morbid feelings. There is 
a curious but quite indubitable connection, between dili- 
gent industry, and sound views upon all subjects, but 
specially on religious subjects. It is idle men who have 
originated the most preposterous opinions ; who have 
launched into useless peculations, which land only in 
sorrow and bewilderment ; and who have sounded the 
lowest depths of perverted and morbid feeling. TTho 
can forget that solemn declaration, of Him who made 
us, and who knows us best, — which tells us of the eter- 
nal connection between hard work, and sound views and 
feelings : " If any man will do His will, he shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be of God " ! Yes, a holy, 
diligent life, is the path to firm conviction, and to a faith 
that never will be shaken. I am not careful to explain 
the logical steps of the process : but I know that the 
wisest men and the most experienced Christians will 
acknowledge the fact. And thus it is, my friends, that 
our Blessed Lord, when he appointed labor for our por- 
tion in this life, did provide not merely for our content- 
ment and sober cheerfulness : but he provided for the 
assurance of our faith, for the soundness of our views, 
for the sobriety of our affections, for the healthful estate 
of our whole spiritual nature, when He gave " to every 
man his work." 

TTe were all taught when we were children, I have 
no doubt, who it is that finds some mischief for idle 



WORK. 



157 



hands to do. And indeed, apart from the pure wretch- 
edness and weariness of being idle, you can hardly 
imagine a position of greater moral risk. The idle 
man is ready to listen to every temptation. Where is 
it that we shall find the grossest forms of vice and folly, 
but among those who by their circumstances are freed 
from the necessity of labor ? Who does not know how 
many young men have been ruined, have been made 
useless and worthless beings, have brought themselves 
down to an early and unhonored grave, through inherit- 
ing a fortune which precluded the necessity of toil? 
And without supposing anything so extreme as that, 
you remember how even Elijah the Tishbite, that great 
man of God, broke down, fell into that impatient depth 
of utter depression, rebelliously asked God to take away 
his life, for he could bear it no longer, just when his 
occupation was gone, — when he had no more to do, — 
when there was nothing to put his mind upon the 
stretch, and to keep it from turning in wrath against 
itself. It was then that the wonderful man was beaten : 
that " he sat down under a juniper-tree, and requested 
for himself that he might die." And you remember too, 
how when the kind God would lift up His servant from 
that morbid state, He remembered the medicinal virtue 
there is in work : He gave the prophet something to do, 
and bade him go and do it ! Then you will think of the 
deep saying of that great, genial, brave, warm-hearted, 



158 



WORK. 



and hasty-spoken man, Martin Luther. " The mind," 
said he, " is like a mill that cannot stop working : give 
it something to grind and it will grind that If it has 
nothing to grind, it grinds on yet ; but it is itself it 
grinds and wears away." Yes, it is most certain, that 
when our Saviour appoints hard labor to all His chil- 
dren, — when He gives "to every man his work," — He 
gives us the thing that is healthiest and best for body 
and soul. 

A third advantage to the Christian of having suitable 
work to do is this : that in faithfully doing his work, and 
doing it in a right spirit, he is doing what tends to make 
him grow in grace : he is working out his salvation all 
the while. 

Let me beg your earnest attention to this matter. 
There are people who imagine that in trying to lead a 
Christian life, and to maintain a devout spirit, what we 
have to do is to devote a certain part of our time to the 
care of our souls, and to our religious duties ; and then 
to spend the rest of our time on our worldly business, to 
the exclusion of the care of our souls. Now, brethren, 
that is not the sound and right idea. What we have to 
do, is to devote the whole of our time to the care of 
our souls. If we are faithful in our work, if we do it all 
in a Christian spirit, and as a work appointed to us by 
Christ and to be done for His sake, and so done as to 
commend our holy faith to all who see and know us, — ■ 



WORK. 



159 



then our spiritual life should be growing all the while. 
It is not merely the minutes of prayer to God alone in 
our closet morning and evening : it is not merely the 
reading of God's word at the family altar, and its united 
prayer : it is not merely the blessed day of rest with its 
public services sanctified by the Holy Spirit : not merely 
the more solemn seasons when we sit down together at 
the table of communion, and by faith feed upon Christ : 
it is not merely through these things that we are work- 
ing out our salvation, by the grace of God. But 
through all our common business : through all that 
work and labor to which man goes forth daily until the 
evening : through all that work which our Lord has set 
" to every man " in his church : often looking up to God, 
often sending away to Him the brief word of prayer 
that tells our need and our sense of dependence : always 
latently remembering our Redeemer and what we owe 
Him : " always bearing about with us the dying of 
Christ" : having that most touching and most influential 
of all remembrances ever at the bottom of our heart, 
and ever ready to start up when in the exigencies of 
common things it is needed, for counsel or for comfort : 
honest and faithful and kind and diligent and patient 
and candid and forgiving, as those ought to be who trust 
they have " been with Jesus," and have in them some 
little of His most pure and merciful and patient mind : 
we may be, through all, most manfully and effectually 



160 



WORK. 



working out our salvation by the kind grace of God. 
Yes, you may be doing far more than the mere first act, 
that would strike the stranger. There is a farther 
reaching sense in every Christian deed, that has its 
anchor within the veil, — that has its reference to a bet- 
ter world. You are talking, perhaps, to some man, on 
some detail of worldly business : the mere first result of 
what you are doing may be no more than the earning 
of so many shillings or pounds. But in the careful gov- 
erning of your temper ; in giving heed to your tongue ; 
in utterly putting down the tendency to take an unfair 
advantage ; in the silent, unexpressed purpose that 
our . Blessed Redeemer's spirit shall be your example 
and your aim ; you may be caring for your soul's 
health and growth through that interview, as truly 
and really though not so directly as in your season of 
most devout meditation, or your hour of most elevated 
prayer. 

You know that the day has been, when people 
thought that it was a mistake in Christ to give " to 
every man his work." The day has been, when people 
thought that Christ had better have given to every man 
nothing to do, but to spend his days in meditation and 
prayer. People once thought that the best way to care 
for your soul's salvation was to give up all other work, 
and go to a hermit's cell, or to a convent or monastery. 
But it has been found, by abundant experience, that He 



WORK. 



161 



who made us and redeemed us knows what suits us infi- 
nitely better than ever did cardinal or pope : and so that 
it is when doing every one his honest worldly work, that 
our spiritual life thrives best, that all Christian graces 
most flourish. My friends, if it were not so : if through 
all the distractions of the many things which often make 
us careful and troubled enough, we could not keep by 
our Saviour's side, and live worthy of our high profes- 
sion ; then the ancient dwellers in the cell and in the 
wilderness would be right after all. For doubtless our 
great work here is the working out of our salvation ; 
and if that work could not go on side by side with 
worldly work, then worldly work must yield. But O, 
brethren, that old delusion goes, in the light of that New 
Testament text : it goes, when we remember Who it is 
that has given to every man his work. Our Redeemer 
has appointed us to labor as we do : and so labor must 
be the right thing. It has its temptations, like every- 
thing on earth : but the Holy Ghost will help us 
through them, if we do but earnestly ask His blessed 
guidance. And if work has its temptations, idleness 
has tenfold worse and more. And so, my Christian 
friends, for all the weariness you sometimes feel ; and 
for all the disposition you sometimes feel to shrink back 
from the work allotted ; you may well thank your Re- 
deemer that He has given you every one your work ; 
and humbly, earnestly, and hopefully, as the sun rises 



162 



WORK. 



day by day, go forth unto your work, and to your labor, 
until the evening. 

Yes, until the evening. Not merely till the setting 
sun, going down in winter gloom or summer glory, tells 
that the toiling day is done : not merely till the close of 
the week's last working-day brings on that blessed day 
of rest, that prefigures a better and happier sabbath- 
keeping that remains for the people of God : but till the 
evening of the longer day of life, with its close in gray 
hairs and powers enfeebled ; or till the sundown which 
may come at noon to any of us here. Have your work, 
Christian friends, according to God's purpose : occupy 
the talent Christ gave you till He comes : do your work 
heartily, and not just to get through ; not in a procrasti- 
nating spirit or in a perfunctory : but trying to feel it is 
the task appointed you by your Redeemer, and no long- 
er the mere weary drudgery of the primeval curse. And 
so, looking back at evening upon each day you will feel 
that "something attempted, something done, has earned 
a night's repose " : and looking back on the longer day 
of life, you will feel it well that the toil is over ; that 
now the weary hand may cease at last, and the weary 
brain be still ! 

I do not promise you, indeed, in that last evening- 
time, what some people do. I do not promise you the 
calm approval of conscience, in the retrospect of a well- 



WORK. 



163 



spent life. I do not promise you that, because I do not 
believe in it. I do believe that after we have done our 
very best to do our work aright, — if our conscience be 
enlightened by God's spirit, we shall see far more to be 
penitent for than to be pleased with, in the very best 
spent life that ever was spent by mortal. Let us do 
our very best, my friends ; and we shall be unprofitable 
servants after all. And let us do our very best, there 
will be nothing in that to rest on in our dying bed, — 
when the evening, long looked-for, comes at last, — when 
the long night is closing round us that will close round 
all. But rather, though our little talent was faithfully 
occupied; — though the work our Master set us was 
done to the very best of our little power, — we shall 
feel that no words will suit us better than those simple 
ones, which we have all known from childhood : — 

Not in mine innocence I trust : 
I bow before Thee in the dust : 
And through rny Saviour's blood alone, 
I look for mercy at Thy throne I 



INTERCESSORY PRATER. 



" Pray one for another." — James v. 16. 

WISH to ask you this question, all you who 
are here : Do you think it does your friends 
any good to pray for them ? Do you believe 
that earnestly to ask God to bless and guide and keep 
those dear to you, will do them any good ? 

Now do you really think, that if you pray that your 
little boy may be a good, happy, Christian man, this 
makes it likelier that he will be so ? Or that, if you 
pray for your child or your sister that is sick, this makes 
it likelier they will get well again ? 

Well, of course you do. Of course you think all this ; 
or you would not pray for your friends at all. And of 
course the Apostle James thought so ; or he would not 
have advised you and me and all Christian people, as he 
does in the text, to "pray one for another." No one 
could really earnestly pray if he thought his prayer was 
to go for nothing. You might repeat over some care- 
less, heartless, formal words of supplication, without 




INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



165 



thinking whether they are to be answered or not ; and 
without caring. But you cannot, with real heart and 
intention, pray either for yourself or for others, unless 
you believe that your prayer is to have some effect, some 
prevalence, somehow. People talk of the secondary and 
reflex good of praying : that is its good effect on the soul 
that offers it : the good that will come of getting into the 
way of going to God with everything that you care 
about, and thus forming a habit of communing with Him. 
But it is quite plain that this good will not come, unless 
the other be supposed and believed in, first. No man 
can deliberately cheat himself into habitual praying, be- 
cause he thinks that though his prayer will never be 
heard, it may do himself good to believe that it will be. 

My brethren, it is very hard to understand how 
prayer does good to the person that offers it. It is 
quite impossible to give any satisfactory explanation of 
the truth, — though we hold it as we hold our lives, — 
that prayer is heard and answered, — and all this with- 
out a constant miracle, — without anything like setting 
aside those ways of God's working which are commonly 
called the laws of nature, or like breaking in on the 
ordinary course of things. That is hard to understand s 
though we are quite sure it is all perfectly true. But it 
is a much more mysterious thing, — and in some points 
of view it is a very awful thing, — to think that prayer 
for others may truly affect their state, both here and 



166 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



hereafter. To think that you feel deeply that some one 
you care for needs the good part in Christ, while he 
perhaps does not feel it at all : and that you go and ask 
God to lead him to Christ : and that this blessed end 
may be, perhaps, brought about by your prayer ! That 
is, in fact, that a human being's fate, in the greatest and 
most important thing of all, may depend, in a great de- 
gree, on what is done by other people. That you are 
likelier to get to Heaven, because you have a friend who 
is a pious man and prays for you ! 

Now perhaps the best way of bringing our minds in 
some measure to understand all this, is to set it before 
us, that all this is no more wonderful than certain other 
arrangements in God's Providence. It is just as hard 
to explain why your eternal destiny may be affected by 
another person's conduct, as by his prayers. Yet we 
know it is. A man's start in life, — and a man's pro- 
gress in life, which depends so much upon his start, — 
is decided mainly by his parentage. If his father and 
mother are good, industrious, duly impressed with the 
responsibility of having a child entrusted to them by 
God to train for this life and the next, — then the man 
has a fair and good start. Being trained up, as a child, 
in the way he should go, it is in the nature of things 
likely that when he grows old, he will not depart from 
it. But if a human being's parents be bad, — if they be 
drunken and dishonest; — if the poor little thing in its 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



167 



miserable home, is never told of Christ, never taught to 
pray, but driven out to beg or steal, — and received 
with blows and curses if it return without having 
begged or stolen enough, — O what chance has that 
little child: at what an awful disadvantage it must 
run the race of life! No doubt, brethren, God sees 
and allows for all this. No doubt, the Judge of all the 
earth will do right. But still, it is all veiy strange. 

And so, if you would ask a good man to do you a 
good turn, you can never do so better than by asking 
him to pray for you. " The effectual fervent prayer of 
a righteous man availeth much.' 9 We all need to feel 
this more than we do. We believe it: but God help 
our unbelief! No doubt, there are few requests and 
few promises ever made with so little sense of what is 
meant by them, as that to pray for another. A person 
will say, that his prayer is that such a friend may be 
happy ; while in fact he never really went to God's foot- 
stool with such a prayer at all. And it may be said, in 
a single sentence, that intercessory prayer for others is 
sometimes characterized by what is even worse than 
unreality. Sometimes the most ill-set and malignant 
thing that one man can do towards another, is to pray 
him, or to threaten to pray for him. You remember 
it country clergyman, named in a certain famous book 
the last century, who threatened the squire of the 
rish that if he did not mend his ways, he would 



168 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



"pray for him in the face of the whole congregation." 
Prayer has sometimes been made a way of conveying 
the most wicked calumnies against a fellow-mortal. 
Not long since, at a public meeting, an individual took 
occasion, in a discourse which he regarded as a prayer, 
to describe another person who had expressed opinions 
which he esteemed to be mischievous, as " that wretched 
man who was lately pouring forth blasphemies." My 
friends, there is something perfectly awful in that. If 
ever Satan was transformed into an angel of light, it 
was when wrath and uncharitablenes3 veiled themselves 
under the fair form of that holy and beautiful thing, 
prayer! O let there never be admitted to our minds the 
faintest idea of hitting at somebody in prayer ! Let 
intercessory prayer always be offered in love. Always 
pray for your feilow-sinner because you wish him well ; 
never because you would hit him hard. And, as a gen- 
eral rule, pray for your fellow-sinner when you yourself 
are alone with God. You know it is the commonly-re- 
peated reproach of many of our prayers in this country, 
that they are not spoken to the Almighty, but spoken at 
the hearers. Let us, my friends, avoid this desecration. 
It is not quite fit to use prayer as a means of conveying 
advice : but far less fit is it to use prayer as a means of 
casting reproach and of wreaking vengeance. 

Let me ask your careful attention, this afternoon, 
some thoughts on the whole subject of Intercess 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



169 



Prayer. Never let us, brethren, preacher or hearers, 
listen to or utter that sermon on which we do not ask 
the blessing of the Holy Spirit of God. But more than 
at other times, if that be possible, let us, in discoursing 
of Prayer, ask the guidance and enlightening grace of 
the Blessed Spirit of All-Prayer. 

We cannot help remembering, as we think of this sub- 
ject, that there is a Church, claiming indeed to be the 
only Church, which seems to make more of Intercessory 
Prayer than we do. We go straight to God with our 
prayers : we go, only through Jesus Christ, the one Me- 
diator. But the Church of Rome teaches that there is 
a host of Mediators : that we are not, generally, to go 
straight to the great God, or to the great Redeemer: 
that they are too exalted to be thus approached by us : 
and so that it is fit we should ask the Virgin, and ask 
the Saints, to intercede for us. I never wish, my friends, 
to speak harshly from this place of any who profess and 
call themselves Christians : and I do not think that the 
worshipping assembly in God's house best spends the 
hour of instruction and exhortation upon matters of con- 
troversy. It is better that we should seek by God's 
grace to mend our own faults, than that we should dwell 
upon those of other men. Yet it would not be right, in 
thinking of Intercessory Prayer, to pass this matter by 
without a word. No doubt, if you had known St. John, 
8 



170 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



or St. Paul, when they were living, you might very 
well have asked them to pray for you. No doubt, there 
have been Christian men, very inferior to St Paul or St. 
John, w T hom if you had known when living, you might 
very well have asked to pray for you. I should have 
esteemed it as a great privilege, to have had the prayers 
of good St. Bernard. I believe that the prayers of 
Thomas a Kempis or of Archbishop Leighton, would 
have done any of us good. I believe there is many a 
Christian man and woman in this congregation and par- 
ish, whose fervent prayers for any of us would make us 
do our duty better, and better bear our cross. But it is 
a different thing altogether to ask such Christians after 
they are dead, to pray for us. They are not here for us 
to ask them. It is exalting them into gods, to suppose 
that after death they can hear requests made to them for 
their prayers, by hundreds of people at once, perhaps in 
hundreds of places. And we may be well assured that 
if such extraordinary power were given by God to any 
mortal, and if we were intended to avail ourselves of it, 
it would have been plainly and unmistakably revealed 
in Holy Scripture. Now you know there is not a word 
in the Bible that teaches us anything like that. And if 
no rational man would pretend to go and ask the advice 
of a dead friend, no more should we ask his prayers. 

There are those, indeed, who pray for us above. We 
have a great High Priest, who is passed into the heav* 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



171 



ens, and who intercedes for us there. And there is, like- 
wise, a kind sympathizing Spirit, Who is God; Who 
makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be 
uttered. And with these intercessors, we need no more. 
We do not need to ask the Virgin Mother of our Lord ; 
we do not need to ask St. Paul or St. John ; we never 
dream, when gathered within these walls, of asking good 
St. Bernard, to take the prayers we offer, and present 
them acceptable unto God. No: we ask the Blessed 
Spirit to prompt us within ; and the Blessed Saviour to 
pray with and for us : and so we are content. There 
are kindness and sympathy in their hearts, millions of 
degrees beyond those of the best man or the kindest 
woman on earth or in heaven. We say, Blessed Jesus, 
pray for us ; Blessed Spirit, pray in us : and no more ! 

And so, the reason why we may ask the living to pray 
for us, but not the dead, is just that we can go and ask 
the living to pray for us ; but we cannot ask the dead. 
They are meanwhile beyond all communication. It is 
possible enough they may be near us sometimes : there 
are things in Holy Scripture which may be taken to imply 
as much. But then we do not know it : we cannot tell 
when they are within hearing of our voice, if they are 
ever so at all. We may believe, indeed, that in the glo- 
ry above, those who loved us and left us do pray for us. 
The mother, that left her little child on earth, will be 
the mother wherever she goes : and will love and care 



172 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



for her little one as much as ever. From her distant 
shore she may be watching her child, through all the 
years in which the rosy little face of infancy is changing 
into the lined features of age. But not a word can pass 
between them. And the child, walking this earth, need 
not ask his departed parent's prayers. Let us bless God, 
that he does not need them. One, more than father or 
mother, does pray for all His people. There is no fan- 
cy, no sentimentalism, about that comfortable truth ! 

But you may pray for your living friends ; and you 
may ask them to pray for you. There is no saying 
what good you may get, by the prayer of Christian 
friends. And you, my brethren, though the humblest 
and poorest, there is no saying the good you may do, — 
do to your children, do to your friends, do to those who 
preach the Gospel to you, do to the whole Church of 
God, by your earnest and persevering prayers ! 

Now, do we feel this? Do we habitually pray for 
those we love ; and do we pray for them with the ear- 
nestness of people who believe our prayers to be a real 
thing ? I am afraid we are, every one of us, often very 
far from feeling all this as we ought to feel it. You who 
are parents, and who work so hard for your children, 
and who care for their well-being a hundred times more 
than you do for your own, wishing that they may be far- 
better and happier people than you have been ; — do you 
pray for them as earnestly as you work ; and as feeling 



INTERCESSORY PHAYER. 



173 



that your prayers may do them as much good as your 
best pains? And do we really and heartily pray for 
those of our fellow- Christians, whose good estate greatly 
concerns our own ? Such are the ministers of the cross, 
who amid much care, and weakness,, and unworthiness, 
tell us of the unsearchable riches of Christ. It concerns 
every Christian in a land like this very deeply, what 
kind of person his minister is ; and whether he do his 
duty cheerfully and hopefully, or sadly and despond- 
ingly. The services of each Sunday ought to be a help 
and comfort to all : Now we know that in our dear 
Church, the comfort and profit of the public worship of 
God depend only too much upon the minister : the con- 
gregation are only too dependent upon his clearness of 
head and devotion of heart : and who can tell how he 
may be strengthened and inspirited by the prayers of the 
flock ? Then, do we pray for those who have used us 
ill, as we think ; though very likely they think differ- 
ently ? Do we pray for them, not spitefully but heart- 
ily ? Not in the spirit of the Pharisee, thanking God 
that we are not as this Publican; but as those who 
remember that they are frail and erring ; and that all 
the blame in any quarrel is seldom upon one side ? And 
do we do all this as believing that our prayer, heartily 
offered through our Saviour, has an actual prevalence ? 
No doubt, whether we pray or work for others' salva- 
tion, we cannot do so with quite the same confidence as 



174 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



for our own : for some consent and co-working on their 
part is needful. But we are to intercede for those we 
care for, as feeling that when we bow before God all 
alone in our closet, and tell Him what we wish for them, 
we are putting a true power in operation : though in the 
case of it, as in the case of every other power we can 
ever put in operation, we must leave the result with 
God. 

Not much need be said as to the way in which we 
ought to pray for those we love. TTe pray for them as 
we pray for ourselves. We ask God to give them the 
same things we ask for ourselves. TTe ask for guidance 
through this present life, and for glory afterward, 
through the precious sacrifice of Christ, and the pre- 
cious influences of the Holy Spirit : and we ask, as the 
occasion arises, for all the multitude of separate bless- 
ings which are included under these. And as the occa- 
sion arises, too, we should do all we can to bring about 
the things for which we pray. All temporal, and all 
spiritual blessings, as God shall see them meet, are the 
things which we may humbly ask for ourselves, and for 
those who are dear to us. And we ask these good 
things for them, just as we ask them for ourselves ; re- 
membering that we know so imperfectly what things are 
truly good for us, that we may oftentimes be asking 
the wrong things : and so desiring that our Heavenly 
Father's wise and kind will may be done in us ; and 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



175 



that He would " bless us indeed * ; — sending us what 
He knows to be blessing, though we should not take it 
to be blessing ; and denying us that which He knows is 
not blessing, though we might think it so. 

But a word may fitly be spoken as to the way in 
which we ought to pray for a different order of human 
beings : for those we think have used us ill ; — for those 
we think in error ; — for those we think in sin. 

I take for granted that we are all agreed that we 
ought to pray for such. No one can forget our Sav- 
iour's words : " Love your enemies : bless them that 
curse you ; do good to them that hate you ; and pray 
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute 
you." 

Now, my friends, in praying for such, let us not do as 
some good people do : take for granted (that is) that 
you are infallibly right ; and that whoever differs from 
you in opinion, or acts in a way you do not like, is cer- 
tainly wrong and bad. It does not at all follow because 
a man thinks differently from you, that he is wrong and 
you are right. And still less does it follow, because a 
man thinks differently from you, even upon very impor- 
tant matters, that he is certainly a bad man. It is not 
quite sure, that in some difference with your neighbor, 
in which you think you have been entirely blameless, 
and that he has treated you very badly, — it is not quite 
sure that you have not been somewhat to blame too. 



176 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



And so, brethren, in praying for such as may be called 
your enemies, — and I believe that truly good and wise 
and kind people, even in this fallen world, will have 
very few, — and that when we have enemies it is gen- 
erally in a great measure our own fault, — let this be 
our rule and way. While you seek heartily to forgive 
such at God's footstool ; and while you ask Him to for- 
give them and to change their hearts ; pray too that He 
may forgive you your share, if any, in the strife ; and 
ask God that whoever is in the wrong, may be made to 
see it, and may be brought to a better mind. Let it be 
suggested, too, as an excellent rule, that prayers for 
such as you think are bad, and have used you badly, be 
offered privately ; when you have entered into your 
closet, and shut the door, and are making your requests 
known to your Father which is in secret. If that rule 
were always adhered to, it would remove the temptation 
to that which is evil and unchristian about certain inter- 
cessory prayers. There would be no temptation to 
pray at the bystanders, rather than to the Almighty : 
there would be no risk of making prayer a declaration 
of your doctrinal belief ; no risk of making prayer a 
creed, and little risk of making it a sermon. There 
would be no risk of making prayer what it has been 
made, — a means of expressing your unfavorable opinion 
of a fellow-sinner's character, or doings, or views : 
no risk of making it something like an imprecation of 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



177 



Divine wrath, hypocritically veiled under the form of 
prayer. Whenever the great thing which you honestly 
feel you ought to ask for any human being, is, that he 
may be turned from the error of his ways, and con- 
verted to a better mind, — ask that of God when you 
are alone with God. It is the safer, better, more 
kindly, and more humble way. To publicly express a 
very unfavorable opinion of a fellow-creature, — even 
though that opinion be couched in the form of a prayer 
for him, — is not, generally, a friendly thing. And it 
may be doubted whether it is ever a purely Christian 
thing. 

There is just one other suggestion which I wish to 
make, as to Intercessory Prayer. It is, that when we 
pray for others, we ought to do the same thing which 
we ought to do when we pray for ourselves : and that 
is, to accompany and follow up our prayers with our 
best endeavors to bring about the things for which we 
pray. You know the great familiar rule for every 
Christian's work and prayer : it is, to pray as earnestly 
as if we could do nothing by ourselves ; and at the same 
time to work as hard as if we could do everything by 
ourselves. And if this, when named, looks like an in- 
consistency, it is just one of the many things about our 
holy religion which grow plain in practice : the difficulty 
is solved by going and trying. And we shall never be- 
lieve that any one is thoroughly sincere in praying for a 
8* jj 



178 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



tiling, unless at the same time he is doing his very best 
to accomplish that thing. Commend us to the practical 
side of Christianity for sound common sense : you will 
nowhere find it set forth more plainly than in the New 
Testament, that Heaven helps those who help them- 
selves : and it is one of the very earliest lessons to be 
got by heart by every believer, that our work and God's 
work weave beautifully into each other : " Work out 
your own salvation : for it is God that worketh in you 
both to will and to do." And it is just those Christians 
who feel most deeply the reality and prevalence of 
prayer, who will most diligently seek to show that they 
are in earnest in offering it, by using every means 
which God puts within their reach to accomplish the 
temporal and spiritual welfare of those for whom they 
pray. It has been well said, that if you want God to 
hear your prayers for others, you must hear them your- 
self. It is as mere a mockery to pray that those you 
love may be brought to Christ, and at last to heaven, 
while yet you never move a finger to bring them, as it 
would be for a man to sit down idly amid his heaps of 
quarried stones and pray that his house may be built, 
while yet he never moves a hand to build it. And yet, 
u Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain 
that build it " : they are but the two aspects of one great 
truth. And indeed, it is only in regard to spiritual 
things, that you will find people so forgetful, that pains 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



179 



must go with prayers. You do not pray that your little 
boy may be a good Greek scholar, and yet never teach 
him Greek. You do not pray that your friend may not 
fall into a pit hard by his way on a dark night, and yet 
never warn him that the pit is there. Now, just act on 
these plain rules of sound sense, as regards the most im- 
portant things of all. You may indeed pray for those 
for whom you can do nothing else : but there are those 
for whom you ought to pray, for whom you may do 
much more. Pray for your children ; and try to train 
them in the right way. Pray for your friends : and 
never miss the chance of doing them a good turn, for 
this life or the next. Pray for the Heathen : and help 
the agencies for their conversion. Pray for the sorrow- 
ful ; and never lose the opportunity of comforting a sad 
heart : and a kind word may go far here ; or even the 
hearty sympathy, felt though unexpressed. O brethren, 
if any human being, even the humblest, were to deter- 
mine that he would go through this world — steadfastly 
using every occasion that offers, for saying a kind word 
or doing a kind deed : if every morning he resolved that 
that day he would by God's blessing sought in prayer, 
lighten some grief, soothe some care, do some good to 
some one ; then God only knows how much that human 
being might do ! And if it be more blessed to give than 
to receive : if you never made another happy, but a 
still greater happiness rose unsought within your own 



180 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



bosom : if the gush of thankful joy in the heart relieved, 
had its warmer and purer counterpart in the heart 
whence came the kind deed that relieved it ; O breth- 
ren, what a pure joy and peace has God put within our 
reach, even in this world of care. 

But it is time that we should cease : our little space 
of weekly meditation has passed away. And let me 
say, in coming to an end, that the great impression 
which I wish we might all carry away from this 
church this afternoon, — and from this half-hour spent 
in thought on Prayer for others, — is, What a great 
means of good and usefulness God has put within our 
reach, in allowing us to do what the text enjoins, — to 
" pray one for another." And the true, great difficulty 
as to Intercessory Prayer, is not to be got over by any 
sermon, or by any argument or illustration, — but only 
by the clear bright irresistible teaching of the Holy 
Spirit of God. All these things which have been said 
you all knew to be true whenever you heard them : I 
have little faith in any religious teaching, for witness to 
whose truth you cannot appeal to the heart and con- 
science of those who hear. But the true difficulty as to 
Intercessory Prayer, is, to feel its reality : to get into 
the way of using it, habitually, as a most effectual and 
powerful means. Let not the promise to pray for 
another, be with us the cheap gift which is valued by 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 



181 



neither giver nor receiver: let it be a living thing, 
which by God's blessing may do good to both. And 
praying one for another, as people of the same Christian 
congregation, — as members of the great family in 
heaven and earth, — O let us feel more drawn together 
in true unity than ever, — as we gather, like little chil- 
dren, at the same great Father's knee ! 



XL 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION UNDER BE- 
REAVEMENT BY DEATH. 

" "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him." — Jerem. xxii. 
10. 

u But He said, Weep not: she is not dead, but sleepeth. — St. 
Luke viii. 52. 

jHESE two texts come from very different quar- 
ters ; and, though the words are very like, their 
' spirit is quite different; and the counsel con- 
tained in the second goes upon a reason a thousand miles 
away from that contained in the first. 

In the first text we have the words of Jeremiah. He 
was an inspired Prophet, but one in whom a special 
amount of human passion and impatience lingered : and 
we seem to trace something of his peculiar nature in the 
way in which he has expressed himself here. Then it 
was not to the end of suggesting comfort to the people of 
Judah, that Jeremiah bade them cease to weep for the 
dead : all he tells them is, that sad as the lot of the dead 
may be, there is something worse ; and they should keep 
their tears for that. For king Shallum, son of Josiah, 
king of Judah, was deposed by the Egyptian king, and 




CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 



183 



carried off to Egypt to hopeless exile ; and all that the 
prophet has to say to the men of Judah, is, that though 
but three months had passed since good king Josiah 
died, they had best cease to weep for Mm : and they 
might weep sorely for the poor exiled Shallum, the 
wicked and deposed monarch, who was carried captive 
into a distant country, and who would see the land 
which he had ruled, briefly and unworthily, never more. 
In short, all the prophet has to suggest comes to this: 
that though there may be reason to mourn for the right- 
eous dead, there is far weightier reason to mourn for 
the hopeless exile, degraded, and broken-hearted. So 
I think, brethren, that in our dark days of bereavement, 
it is not to Jeremiah that we shall go for consolation. 
He has little to give ! 

Nay ; we shall go somewhere else : and what Chris- 
tian needs to be told to Whom we should go for every- 
thing that is good, and comforting, and cheering ! Not 
to the impatient Jeremiah, but to our own blessed 
and beloved Redeemer: not to Jeremiah telling that 
there is something sadder than death ; but to our 
Saviour telling that if we could see it right, death is 
not sad at all : not to Jeremiah telling that Josiah, dead 
in his grave, was less to be wept for than Shallum cap- 
tive and exiled ; but to our blessed Lord, the Resurrec- 
tion and the Life, telling that to the believer there is no 
true death at all ; hushing the mourners round that little 



184: 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



bed; — looking on the pale face of the little girl lying 
there, and saying, u She is not dead, but sleepeth ! " 
You know, of course, — for every Christian knows, 

— that in the little child of whom our Redeemer was 
speaking life had but lately gone. And you know, too, 
that it was very soon to be called back : that those par- 
ents were to be comforted as no parents among us will 
ever be : that the Great Awaking for which all the 
Christian dead sleep, was to be anticipated in that 
young sleeper : and that with kindliness and almighty 
power blended as they never were in another that ever 
trod this earth, the great Lord of life was to speak to 
her by the pet name she used to bear about the house, 

— was to say the inexpressibly sympathetic Tdlitha 
Cumi. which does not mean Damsel, arise, but Rise, my 
little pet. — and restore her to life again. But although 
there were special circumstances in that case, such as 
cannot be with you, my friends, in your bereavements, 
still we may most fitly regard these words of the text 
as spoken to all Christian mourners, as the sure and 
precious and abiding consolation of all the Church of 
Christ. 

Let us think of them so. And may that kindest 
Friend, the blessed Spirit of all light as well as of all 
comfort, in this as in all things be our Guide ! 

You know, brethren, the confused and inconsistent 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 185 



kind of feeling which mourners, in their first days of 
trial, know so well : how sometimes you feel as though 
you had resigned yourself to God's will ; and as though 
you had so realized the blessed hopes and consolation of 
the Gospel, that you could quite look beyond the mould- 
ering grave, and the poor body sown in corruption, to 
the immortal rest, and holiness, and happiness, to which 
the soul of the believer has gone; and how again the 
thought of your own loss, and of all the lowliness and 
unutterable sadness of the fact of death, so overwhelms 
you, that for the while you can but weep and endure. 
No doubt, there is something very true to human nature 
and human feeling in the blank, disappointed way in 
which Martha, the sister of Lazarus, received the Sav- 
iour's promise that her brother should rise again. "I 
know," she said, " that he shall rise again in the resur- 
rection at the last day." I know all that, it is as though 
she said : but that is not what I want : that is cold and 
far away. Ah brethren, the feeling has been common 
in all believing hearts ever since ! Not always can they 
fully take the Christian comfort given by Him Who 
" hath abolished death." They cannot but vaguely think, 
that though the dear ones they have lost are safe with 
Jesus, still it may be a very long, weary way, that must 
be trodden before they shall meet again : that our eyes 
must look on many things before they shall see again 
the face and the form that left us ; and that to have a 



186 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



parent or a child in Heaven, is not like having them here 
by our side. O, what long years of weariness, care, 
temptation, before the little child you see going about 
dressed in black because its mother has been called from 
this world,, will see a mother's face again ! 

Now, brethren, I will acknowledge, quite readily, that 
a heathen philosopher, just as well as a Christian minis- 
ter, might write an eloquent sermon on a text that bids 
us cease to mourn for the dead. Indeed, various phi- 
losophers, casting our blessed Faith quite aside, have 
actually done something like that. The evil is, that 
though the philosophic and sentimental considerations 
which such men have suggested, may seem weighty and 
forcible in days when all goes well with us, no real 
mourner would care a straw for them; and least of 
all the philosopher himself, when great bereavement 
came his way. You will remember that beautiful 
letter which Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator, 
received from his friend Sulpicius, on his daughter's 
death : which sets out in language which few divines 
can command, every reason for being comforted except 
the right ones. Before Christianity taught the mourner 
of a blissful world beyond the grave, and of a happy 
meeting there, what could you have said to comfort the 
parent whose beloved child had died ? Well, we know. 
For that letter of condolence shows us all that could be 
said, by kindness and ingenuity, without Christianity, to 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 187 

comfort the heart-broken mourner : but O, how poor, 
how empty, what a mere mockery all that comfort is ! 
"Why grieve, says the Koman friend to the great philos- 
opher : surely after seeing your country enslaved, your 
heart should be indifferent to so small a matter as the 
loss of a poor weak, tender woman ! And then the 
friend adds, Do not forget that you are Cicero, the wise, 
the philosophical Cicero, who was wont to give advice 
to others. Remember those judicious counsels now, 
and let it not be said that fortitude is the single virtue 
to which my friend is a stranger. These are the kind 
of things which philosophy was able to suggest, as rea- 
sons why we should cease to weep for the dead. There 
was, indeed, another topic of consolation suggested by 
that good Roman friend, of which I purpose to say more 
before I conclude : but passing on for the present, let us 
think what is, in sober fact, the consolation which our 
blessed religion offers to such as mourn the loss of 
friends. 

And let it be acknowledged, that strong consolation is 
needed here. It is here that the pressure is put upon 
our faith ; the strongest pressure it will have to bear till 
we come to die ourselves. The parting of friends is a 
very sad thing, even though both remain in this world : 
it is no light matter, as those who have felt it can tell, 
for a human being to go out from his father's house, and 
to turn his back on the scenes and the friends of child 



183 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



hood, perhaps never to see them more. It is sad, when 
those who sat in infancy by the same fireside, and 
prayed at the same parent's knee, must fight the battle 
of life far apart, each bearing cares and knowing men 
that the other will never see nor know. And yet, 
though half the world be the space that parts them, and 
years have passed on since last they met, while they re- 
main in this life the means of communication are not cut 
off: the letter comes, time by time, with good news 
from a far country ; and it is at least possible that 
they may meet again. But the parting which death 
makes, is absolute and complete. No tidings come to us 
from the country beyond the grave. It is a silent 
country, an unseen country : we can hear and see and 
know literally nothing of our friends who have entered 
it. So far as sense can discern, it is as though they 
were not. 

And let it be said honestly, that the loss is unspeaka- 
ble. The bitterness of death is not entirely past. It 
comes, indeed, of our weak faith that it is so : but then 
to have a faith which is often weak and trembling is the 
condition of our being here. Our religion does not re- 
quire us to repress entirely that great sorrow which He 
who made our hearts knows they have felt at such 
times, and must feel again. Our Blessed Eedeemer 
Himself, with human frailty, wept beside a grave. It is 
in no unfeeling spirit of stoicism that He uttered such 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 



189 



words as those of the text : it is because He can show 
the mourner abundant reason why he should dry his 
tears. 

Now the great grounds of Christian comfort, in times 
of bereavement, are two. One relates to those you 
have lost : the other relates to yourselves. The first is, 
that those who have died in Christ have made a blessed 
and happy change in leaving this world for that where 
they are now. And the second is, that if you and they 
be both united to Christ, you have the confident assur- 
ance that you shall meet again. 

And, indeed, brethren, when we think of the first 
of these, we are constrained to feel and lament our want 
of faith. No truth can be plainer, than that Heaven is 
better than earth: a hundred things go to prove that: 
.but it is only now and then that we are lifted up to a 
height of spiritual insight and fervor in which we truly 
feel that it is so. Strong convictions, large but vague, 
are often indicated by little things : just as floating 
straws show the direction of a great wind. And there 
is one little peculiarity in our common way of speaking, 
which shows our natural unbelief in the grand Chris- 
tian doctrine, that to the believer "to die is gain." 
Speaking even of friends who, we most firmly believe, 
have fallen asleep in Jesus, you know we habitually 
speak of them as though they were objects of pity : we 
speak of our poor friend, our poor sister, our poor little 



190 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



child, that died. This is, doubtless, a manifestation of 
that curious inconsistency with which, I have already 
said, we think of the departed. It comes, too, of our nat- 
urally thinking of them as we saw them last, in the pain 
of dying, or in the lowliness and helplessness of death ; 
— thinking of these things, rather than of the unseen 
glory and rest to which they passed away. No doubt, 
the lowliness comes first ; and that is the last thing we 
can see. Through a dark and gloomy portal, the Chris- 
tian enters the land of light : it is " through the grave 
and gate of death/' that we pray we may " pass to our 
joyful resurrection ! " Yet there is a pleasing touch of 
simple faith, in the fashion in which in another country 
they name the Christian dead. They don't say "my 
poor friend " there, nor " my poor child " : no, they use 
the word which in their tongue means blessed, happy. 
And surely that is the worthier way in which to speak 
of such as have gone from this world of sin and sorrow, 
of corroding care and anxiety, and of no full satisfac- 
tion to the thirsting soul, into the land of holiness and 
happiness, of peace and rest. 

And surely, Christian Mends, you may well see rea- 
son to cease mourning for the Christian dead, when you 
think where they have gone : and how much better they 
are there than here. And though in the weakness of 
nature you may not be able to take this comfort at the 
first, yet you would not truly wish those dear ones back 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 191 



again. However amiable, however good and happy 
they were here, they are inconceivably better there: 
and let us pray for God's grace to feel it! Parents, 
whose child God has taken, just think how gloriously 
that little thing is provided for ! You would have been 
content to be parted from your little boy in this life, 
if that was needful for his comfort and advancement; 
you never expected that he would be with you all your 
days ; but you knew that in a little he must go out, like 
a bird from the nest, to push his way through life alone. 
And it is better that the Saviour has taken him by the 
hand, and given him a place in His own happy pres- 
ence. Your child went soon, perhaps : but you cannot 
tell if death would ever afterwards have found that 
little one so fit to die. It was an innocent thing when 
it went away from you : and there was no mark of sin 
on its fair face : but the seed of that evil thing was in 
its heart ; and you cannot tell to w T hat it might have 
grown. And let every one, who mourns a Christian 
friend departed, think how much evil that friend may 
have been taken away from. It may be, — you cannot 
tell, — that the dearest friend you have, though now to 
all seeming an earnest believer, may be taken by the 
Tempter's wiles, and fall short of heaven and happi- 
ness ; but the dead one is safe! He is where no change 
can ever come, save that blessed change from good and 
pure, to purer and better. And when you think of all 



192 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



your departed friend is, how holy, how happy, how safe 
and sure, — and then think of all the care, and pain, 
and sin, — and the risk of eternal ruin, — that hang 
over this present life, — tell me, Christian brethren, 
as you stand over the bed where he lies, even with the 
first sorrow in your heart, would you wish him to live 
again ? If God were for once to give you the power to 
bid the soul come back, would you dare to speak the 
word that would do so? 

But there is another reason why we should not mourn 
unduly for the dead who die in the Lord : one that 
touches us who remain more nearly. It is this : that 
we hope to meet them again ; — we know that if our 
own death be that of the righteous, we shall certainly 
meet them again. 

And perhaps, after all, this is the thought that will 
avail the most to dry the mourner's tears. It is indeed 
a comforting thing to think that those who have left 
us are holy and happy and are with Christ, however 
little we may know about details. But though we were 
assured of this, yet there would be something indescrib- 
ably sad, in the thought that we should never see them 
more, and they had quite forgotten us. We are selfish 
creatures at the best : and it would be bitter to think 
that in the memory of the glorified dead we once knew 
so well, there survived no trace of our days together. 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 193 



Some of you may know, that the class of Christian 
divines whose great end is to strip Christianity of all 
human interest, and to make it as cold and repulsive 
as themselves, — going, of course, upon the grand prin- 
ciple, that the more disagreeable a thing is, the likelier 
it is to be the right thing, — have maintained that in the 
better world there is no recognition, and no remem- 
brance : and that those admitted to heaven may live 
through eternity in the society of its happy souls, and 
never know that the spirit next them was a sister, a 
child, a friend, on earth. I am not going to waste time 
in arguing against a notion so monstrous : enough to say 
that there is not the slightest warrant for it in God's 
word or in man's reason : and if you would be guided 
by me, my friends, whenever you find that chilling, dis- 
heartening, and revolting doctrine set out in any book, 
you would finally lay that book aside, as written by 
some one utterly unfit to be trusted with the instruction 
of his fellow-creatures, in matters so momentous. 

And let me repeat, that the certain hope of meeting 
and recognizing our departed friends, is perhaps the 
most deeply felt reason why the Christian should not 
mourn for the dead. It must have been a fearful thing 
to hear a friend's last farewell, for such as cherished no 
expectation of ever seeing or conversing with him more. 
We hardly wonder at the overwhelming anguish which 
impelled to wild despair some of those who sorrowed 
9 m 



194 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



with no hope. To think, that time would go on and on, 
bringing its manifold changes : and jet that the touch 
of the vanished hand would never more be felt, nor the 
old familiar face be seen ! But it is quite different now. 
TTe know the words well; homely and kindly words, 
and true : — 

" A few short rears of evil past, 
We reach that happy shore, 
Where death-divided friends at last, 
Shall meet to part no more! " 

And you are quite justified in believing, that in the bet- 
ter world, there are memories that are treasuring hours 
of converse with you ; and hearts that are waiting, with 
certain and happy expectation, till you arrive there. 
They have left you in this world ; and you will miss 
their kind advice, and their warm affection, and their 
earnest prayers ; but death can neither drown remem- 
brance nor quench love : and they are remembering you 
and waiting for you : and theirs will be the first voices 
to welcome you, entering the Golden City. And the 
meeting there will not be as men meet here, where a 
parting waits on every meeting ; and where the joy of 
meeting is often damped by the sight of the sad change 
which has been wrought by the intervening time. 
partings there ! Many of you will think how the best 
of Christian poets, looking back as an old man upon the 
mother he lost when a little child of six years old, has 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 195 



beautifully told us that. For fifty-two years the over- 
sensitive man had come on his earthly pilgrimage, since 
the little boy of six last saw his mother's face. You re- 
member the famous words : — 

" I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day: 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away : 
And turning from my nursery-window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! 
But was it such ? It was. Where thou art gone 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! " 

We can reach no higher than that, in the way of com- 
fort for the Christian mourner. Yet, turning from this 
warm reality, let me, to make you feel how unspeakable 
are our Christian privileges, turn back for a minute to 
that letter of philosophic consolation I have already 
named : and show you what a good and virtuous man, 
not knowing of Christ, could say by way of support to a 
father who had lost a beloved child. He wrote thus : — 

" I lately fell into a reflection which, as it afforded 
great relief to the disquietude of my own heart, may 
possibly contribute, likewise, to assuage the anguish of 
yours. In my return out of Asia, as I was sailing from 
.ZEgina towards Megara, I amused myself with contem- 
plating the circumjacent countries. Behind me lay 
iEgina, before me Megara ; on my right I saw Piraeus, 
and on my left Corinth. These cities, once so flourishing 



196 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



and magnificent, now presented nothing to my view but 
a sad spectacle of desolation. Alas, I said to myself, 
shall such a short-lived creature as man complain, when 
one of his race falls either by the hand of violence, or 
by the common course of nature : while in this narrow 
compass so many great and glorious cities, formed for a 
much longer duration, thus lie extended in ruins ? Re- 
member then, my heart, the general lot to which man 
is born, and let that thought suppress thy unreasonable 
murmurs. Believe me, I found my mind greatly re- 
freshed and comforted by these reflections." 

There, my friends, was the sort of consolation in 
bereavement which the greatest ingenuity and affection 
could suggest, apart from religion. And what do you 
think of it ? What do you think it is worth ? Would that 
kind of thing comfort your heart, as you laid a beloved 
child in the grave ? Would you not feel it a hollow mock- 
ery of your anguish ? In those letters it is taken for 
granted on both sides that Cicero had parted with his 
child forever, — that she was gone out like the flame of 
an extinguished taper, — gone ! But O, when the Sun 
of Righteousness rose, how the darkness of bereavement 
was scattered ! You don't go to a mourner now, and 
say, Remember that St. Andrews Cathedral is in ruins ; 
so is Linlithgow Palace ; so is Holyrood Chapel. When 
grand things like these go, why mourn for your little 
loss ? Nay verily : you speak of the Blessed Spirit of 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 197 



all comfort, and of life and immortality brought to light 
by Jesus Christ our great Redeemer ! And the parent 
may remember yet, with many tears, the darkness of 
that season when a little child died : may remember yet 
how her heart was almost broken as she looked on the 
white little face, and the cold lips laboring with the rapid 
breath, and then the little silky head laid in its coffin : 
but even amid her grief the mother knows that her child 
has gone to a far kinder parent than herself, and to a 
Home so happy and so safe that not even she could 
wish it back again : and as for herself, she knows too, 
that if her faith is rested on her Redeemer, when a few 
short years are gone, and she too has passed through 
the river of death, a white little spirit will await her on 
the farther side with the joyfullest welcome; and the 
mother will enter the gate of Paradise, not like a 
stranger to the place, but hand in hand with her child ! 

And it is with glorious realities like these, and not 
with sentimentalism about ruined cities, that Jesus 
lightens the darkness of bereaved hearts and homes. 
He does not say, " Weep not, for it is no great matter 
after all": but "Weep not: they are not dead, but 
sleeping ! " 

Now I should be uncandidly shrinking from declar- 
ing the truth, if I failed to remind you, in concluding, 
that all this strong consolation belongs only to such as 



198 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION 



have believed in Christ, and as mourn the loss of 
Christian friends. And the two practical lessons from 
tins thought are, that if we would not have death part 
us eternally from those dear to us, we ought first, to 
make our own calling sure by God's grace, that we 
may not on the Judgment Day see them on the right 
hand of the throne, and ourselves cast out to perdition : 
and next, that we should care for the souls of those 
dear to us as well as for our own, lest upon that great 
day any such should accuse us of that neglect which 
ended in everlasting separation : saying that if we had 
warned them as we ought, they had not come to this 
end of woe ! God forbid that any here should ever 
have to think, that there were turning-points, moments 
of decision, in which our counsel and entreaty might 
have saved a soul from death ; yet through our remiss- 
ness, did not ! 

Do you sometimes think, as you sit by the warm 
winter-evening fireside, and hear the keen blast shake 
the windows, and howl mournfully through the leafless 
boughs, — and as you look round on the cheerful scene 
within, with its warm light and its blazing fire, — do 
you sometimes think then how out in the dark of the 
winter night, the snow lies white or the rain plashes 
heavy above some dear one's grave : how the sharp 
blast roars round the head-stone that marks where 



UNDER BEREAVEMENT BY DEATH. 199 



such a one sleeps, — sleeps cold, and motionless, and 
alone : and does it seem to you a hard thing and a sad 
thing, that in that dreary melancholy of the grave the 
departed one of the family must lie and slumber, while 
the fire is blazing bright on the hearth of the old home ; 
till it seems to you a natural thing to weep for the dead, 
condemned to that cold negation of all that is bright 
and cheering? And do you sometimes think, in the 
long beautiful twilights of summer, summer with its 
green grass and its bright flowers, — that surely it is a 
loss to those that are gone, that they cannot see the 
softened evening light, nor breathe the gentle air? but 
that in their cold and narrow bed they still must rest 
and moulder ; knowing nothing of the sweet scenes that 
surround them: not seeing the daisies in the sunshine 
over them, not feeling the soft breeze sighing through 
the grass that lies upon their breast? If you do these 
things, then remember, that it is not the dead you loved 
that moulder in that grave: it is but the cast-off robe, 
the shattered cottage of clay, that is turning there to 
the dust: it is the weak fancy of erring humanity, to 
dream that what in our friends we loved, has part or 
portion there. Remember, that dwelling above, in light 
and glory, they never miss the warmth of the winter 
evening fireside, or the calm of the evening in June. 
And taught, God helping you, by His own illuminating 
Spirit, you may discern a vision of a glorious land, — 



200 



CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. 



that self-same " country " which the " strangers and 
pilgrims on earth" have sought for these six thousand 
years : a country where the " tabernacle of God is with 
men, and He shall dwell with them : and they shall be 
His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and 
be their God." Where " God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes : and there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain : for the former things are passed away ! 99 
And taught by our kindest Guide, the Blessed and 
Holy Spirit, to see that Happiest and Holiest Land : 
thinking of the glory of its inhabitants, their peace and 
rest : and thinking of the " abundant entrance " which 
our gracious Saviour offers into it to all who will but 
come to Him: we shall humbly ask Him to lead us 
thither ; and we shall " weep for the dead " that " sleep 
in Jesus," no more ! 



XII. 



THE FIRST PRAYER IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 

" And hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and when Thou 
nearest, forgive." — 1 Kings viii. 30. 

HE Temple is finished at last ; that holy and 
beautiful house which David had it in his 
heart to build, but the completion of which 
was reserved for Solomon his son, in his days of wisdom 
and magnificence. The wealth and the art of that age 
have done their utmost, to make a fitting house for 
God ; for in that age men were wont to render to the 
Almighty of their best ; and though their very best was 
poor to make a dwelling for Him whom the heaven of 
heavens cannot contain, still they felt that that was only 
the stronger reason why it should be freely and heartily 
rendered. Stone and cedar-wood, gold, silver, and 
brass, all have been gathered and fashioned ; and si- 
lently like the palm-tree growing, that mystic fabric rose 
in glory. The cedar has been carved, the costly stones 
have been laid, the chapiters have been moulded, the 
curtains have been spread, the two thousand measures 
9* 




202 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



of water have been poured into the molten sea. The 
workmen have stayed their hands at last : and to the 
Feast of the Temple's Dedication, that Feast whose stir 
and bustle are so long since past, Solomon has assem- 
bled " the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the 
tribes, and the chief of the fathers of the children of 
Israel." They bring in the Ark, and lay it down within 
the holy place ; and the glory of the Lord fills the house 
of the Lord. And the king, standing before God, the 
spokesman of a great multitude gathered in solemn 
silence, recounts how his father had desired to build 
that house, but had not been permitted ; — how at 
length the house had been built, and was here pre- 
sented, a humble but hearty offering to the Almighty. 
It is as if Solomon said, Look on this house, it is our 
very best, it is all we can do, though a poor place for 
the house of God. " But will God indeed dwell on the 
earth ? Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens 
cannot contain Thee ; how much less this house that I 
have builded ! Yet have Thou respect unto the prayer 
of Thy servant, and to his supplication, Lord my 
God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which 
Thy servant prayeth before Thee to-day : That Thine 
eyes may be open toward this house night and day, 
even toward the place of which Thou hast said, My 
name shall be there : that Thou mayest hearken unto 
the prayer which Thy servant shall make toward this 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



203 



place. And hearken to the supplication of Thy servant, 
and of Thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward 
this place : and hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling- 
place ; and when Thou hearest, forgive ! " 

Such, and so simple, touching, and beautiful, were 
the words of the first prayer offered under the roof of 
Solomon's Temple ; and it appears to me that there is 
something very striking and suggestive in these words. 
" Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and -when 
Thou hearest, forgive." Forgiveness is the first thing 
asked for. Solomon takes it for granted that forgive- 
ness will be the great thing needed by those who in 
after days would pray in that house. He does not tell 
us what shall be the prayer, further than as the nature 
of the prayer is implied in the nature of the answer he 
bespeaks for it. It is as if he said, When Thou hearest 
the prayer offered here, listen to it in Thy dwelling- 
place, and answer it fully and completely, — and that 
will be done by granting forgiveness to those who in 
this place shall at any time offer prayer. " When Thou 
hearest, forgive." In that single request, in that one 
word, Solomon gathers up the essence, as it were, of all 
the prayers that ever should be offered beneath that 
Temple's roof. Ah, how well the wise king understood 
human nature ! Do not fancy that it was because of 
what he knew of the especial nature of the Jewish 
people, ever a race prone to go astray, and thus likely 



204 



THE FIRST PEAYEB 



when they came up to the Temple, to have need to ask 
for pardon, that Solomon preferred the petition he did 
then. Nay : it was because Solomon knew well, that 
pardon will always be sinful man's great want, and that 
pardon ought to be the burden of sinful man's constant 
prayer. He knew that out of all the things which we 
can ask from God, there are many which we may need 
at some times and not at others, or which some men 
may need and others may not need ; and so which may 
sometimes be prayed for, and at other times not men- 
tioned in our prayers. But there was one thing, he 
knew well, which was needed by every man, at every 
hour, and in every place ; and so which should be espe- 
cially asked for in every prayer. The human race, 
amid all its accidental differences, of color, and clime, 
and language, is in its essence everywhere the same : 
the self-same thing now, in the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century, as when amid a multitude of men, all 
dead, all buried, all forgotten, Solomon stood before 
God at his Temple's Dedication : if David prayed, 
" Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great " ; the Saviour 
when He dictated a prayer for Christian use to the end 
of time, taught us to say u Forgive us our debts, as we 
forgive our debtors " : and never more fittingly can we 
even yet bespeak God's kindly attention to the prayer 
of any mortal anywhere, than in that petition which 
dates from nearly three thousand years back, and which 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



205 



says, " Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and 
when Thou nearest, forgive ! " 

So familiar have these words become to our ears, that 
I doubt not many of us are accustomed both to hear 
and to utter them with very little thought of all they 
mean. And I have thought that it might be a very fit 
thing, and profitable for us all, to fix our attention for 
a while to-day upon them, and to consider how many 
things are implied and suggested by them. May God's 
Spirit so direct us, that we may draw from them tha 
spirit and essence of the truth they teach ; and nothing 
less nor more. 

The first thing which I shall mention as taught us 
by this text, is, that all men are sure to need forgive- 
ness: that whatever differences there may be among 
them in other respects, they all agree in this, that they 
are sure to need forgiveness. You observe, Solomon 
had no particular individuals in his eye, when he ut- 
tered these words of our text. He did not know who 
they might be that might "pray toward that place"; 
he says " Hearken Thou to the supplication of Thy ser- 
vant, and of Thy people Israel, when they shall pray 
toward this place ; and hear Thou in heaven Thy dwel- 
ling-place ; and when Thou hearest, forgive." But Sol- 
omon felt that he could not go wrong in entreating that 
besides and beyond the other blessings, whatever they 



206 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



might be, that God might grant in answer to prayer to 
the people who should ever pray in that Temple, the 
Almighty might grant forgiveness to all, without any 
exception. That was as much as to say that whether 
future suppliants did at the time when they might pre- 
sent their supplications, need or not need strength for 
duty, counsel in perplexity, comfort in sorrow, sober- 
mindedness in success, or resignation in disappointment, 
they were quite sure all to need forgiveness. Any 
other thing they might need or not: this, from the very 
make of their being, they must need. Now, what is 
forgiveness ? Forgiveness implies that a man has done 
something that is wrong; — some wrong that is es- 
pecially directed against some other being ; — and so 
which might justly excite the being wronged to regard 
the wrong-doer with an unfriendly and angry feeling, 
and seek to inflict punishment upon him : but that the 
being wronged resolves to pass by the offence done 
him, — to blot it out from recollection, so far as may 
be, — to cherish no angry spirit towards the offender, 
and to take no vengeance upon him for that which he 
has done. I have endeavored to set out what is meant 
without using at all the word which we are accustomed 
to employ to signify all this ; but I am sure it will at 
once arise in the mind of all of you: all this is just 
saying in other terms that every man is a sinner, and 
needs the pardon of his sins. I need not speak of 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



207 



God's word as telling us this : universal experience says 
the same thing. Although you know nothing more of 
any person than simply that he is a human being, you 
are quite sure that times without number he has done 
wrong, or neglected to do right. If you were to go 
into a church that was newly built, and had never yet 
been used for public worship, you would feel quite cer- 
tain that every person who ever would worship there, 
though the church should stand till the end of the 
world, would be a sinful person, needing, as the very 
first and greatest thing he needed, that the Almighty 
God, whose favor is life, whose anger is death, should 
pardon his sins: and as you thought of future congre- 
gations that in days to come should pray beneath that 
roof, old and young, sorrowful and joyful, prosperous or 
disappointed, how fittingly you might breathe the pe- 
tition which Solomon offered when his beautiful Tem- 
ple was dedicated to God ; and say, " And hearken 
Thou to the supplication of Thy people, when they 
shall pray in this place : and hear Thou in heaven Thy 
dwelling-place ; And when Thou hearest, forgive ! 99 

A second thing which I think we may learn from 
our text is, that the chief thing which beings like us 
ought to ask for in our prayers, is the pardon of our sins. 
Solomon seems to have thought that there was noth- 
ing which men needed so much; nothing which it was 



208 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



so important that they should get ; nothing which 
included and meant so much. He seems to have 
thought, — for he asks for nothing more, — that if a 
man received this blessing, if a man was completely 
forgiven, — he was safe, he had got everything, he 
needed no more. Prayer, you know, is asking what 
ice need in Christ's name : and of course, the thing 
mainly to be prayed for is the thing we most need. 
And it does not cost much thought to enable us to see 
and feel, that this thing is pardon and forgiveness of 
sin. It was of this, no doubt, that our Blessed Lord 
was thinking, when, alluding to something which he 
did not name, but which all would understand, he said 
u One thing is needful." For see what is meant by 
being an unforgiven sinner. It means that a man has 
the anger of the Almighty God resting upon him. It 
means that the creature, weak, helpless, dependent, is 
at enmity with the Creator, without whose aid he can- 
not draw a breath, move a limb, live a moment. It 
means that the word of the True is solemnly plighted 
to destroy him : that the power of the Almighty is sol- 
emnly engaged to destroy him. It means that he is 
one of those, concerning whom God has declared that 
when they leave this world, they must enter into a 
place of infinite and never-ending woe and wretched- 
ness; and there dwell through eternity still under the 
burden of His wrath. That is what is meant by be- 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



209 



ing a sinner, not forgiven : it means that everything 
is wrong! It means that everything that is bad is 
doomed to come down on the wretched soul : it implies 
that nothing that is good can ever be enjoyed by it, so 
long as it remains as it is. Is it not plain, then, that 
the first and greatest need of every man, is that he 
should be forgiven ? And what is meant by being for- 
given? It means that everything that was wrong be- 
fore, is now set right. It means that everything that 
was bad before, is now made good. It means that God, 
before an enemy, is now a friend. It means that God, 
formerly the angry Judge, is now the reconciled and 
gracious Father. It means that God's true word, 
formerly plighted to destroy us, and God's Almighty 
power, formerly engaged to destroy us, are now 
plighted and engaged to preserve and bless us. It im- 
plies that through all our earthly duties, God's kind 
hand will lead us : that in all our earthly trials, God's 
kind hand will support us : that when we leave this 
world, heaven shall be our home, and Jesus our brother, 
and endless eternity our pure and happy life. All that 
is meant when we speak of being forgiven. There is 
not a blessing, great or small, that we can ever need, 
that is not included within the compass of that word. 
Was it any wonder, then, that the wisest man should 
make that the burden of the first prayer he offered be- 
neath the roof of the Temple he had built to God ! 



210 



THE FIRST PBAYER 



Or did it not rather show how wise he was, when ad- 
dressing One from Whom we have so very much to 
ask, yet before Whom our words should be few and 
well-ordered, he expressed his general request that his 
people might receive from God everything that was 
good for them ; as he said, tt Hear Thou in heaven Thy 
dwelling-place ; and when Thou nearest, forgive ! " 

A third thing which I think we are taught by the text 
is, that God is the only Being who can forgive, in the 
large and full sense of that word. You will remember, 
when I say this, the remark of the Scribes and Pharisees 
when our Saviour told a certain man that his sins were 
forgiven ; they said, " This man blasphemeth : who can 
forgive sins but God only ? " And they said what was 
true, if Christ had been a mere man. No one but God 
can forgive sin. And it is quite easy to show you how 
and why it is so. For, you know quite well, an offence 
can be forgiven only by the person against whom it was 
committed. Nothing can be plainer than this : that if 
you had done some wrong to one neighbor or friend, it 
would be of no use to go and try to make amends for 
that wrong to somebody else. And if you felt in your 
own heart that you had done wrong to any man, you 
would not feel easy in your mind till you had confessed 
your error and obtained forgiveness from the very man 
to whom you had given cause of offence. Now all sin 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



211 



is in its essential nature, something committed against 
God ; and, therefore, it can only be forgiven by God. 
I know quite well that very many sins are committed 
against man as well as against God : and when that is 
so, the offender will not find peace until he has acknowl- 
edged his offence and obtained forgiveness from the 
human being he has offended, as well as from the Al- 
mighty. But every sin is committed against God : some 
against man too, but all against God. Whenever any 
wrong is done, God is wronged by it, whether man is or 
is not. And although it may make a deed more mis- 
chievous, when it does harm to many human beings, — 
when it wrongs man as well as God, — still it adds little 
or nothing to its guilt : for the essence of its evil is de- 
rived from its being sin against God: that one fact 
makes it just as bad as bad can be. There is a striking 
illustration in Scripture of this great truth, that sin 
especially consists in wrong done to God, — that its 
great aggravation consists in this, — and that when the 
conscience is awakened, the thing that weighs most 
heavy on a man's heart is, that he has sinned against 
God. You will all remember on what occasion it was 
that David uttered the penitent words, " Against Thee, 
Thee only, have I sinned." Words strangely out of 
place, we should be ready at first to say. Why, if ever 
there were sin against man, — against the individual man, 
and against the very framework and foundations of hu- 



212 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



man society, it was David's foul, base, execrable, for- 
given but never forgotten sin in the matter of Uriah 
the Hittite. Had he not sinned against that faithful 
servant, — sinned against every honest man and virtu- 
ous woman in his dominions, — sinned against the throne 
he had disgraced, — sinned against that trust, and faith, 
and honor between man and man, that is the thing that 
holds society together, and that keeps men from flying 
off from one another, a wretched, suspicious, hating and 
hateful race of solitaries, each with the hand against all 
comers ? And does the murderer, the adulterer, the liar, 
the betrayer, the mean wretched trickster (for had he 
not been an inspired king, every man would have called 
him all that, and that he was an inspired king makes 
him worse, not better), does he think to extenuate his 
guilt, by forgetting all the beings and the interests he 
had wronged so foully, and turning to God with his 
transparent pretext, " Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
sinned " ? Nay, not so. David did not mean to exten- 
uate or cloak his guilt : his eyes had been opened, too 
late for his fame though not too late for forgiveness, to 
the unexampled wickedness of his conduct : we cannot 
doubt that he felt all these circumstances of aggravation 
deeply and keenly : but still he felt that the great, cen- 
tral, blackening and overmastering virus of his sin was, 
that it was sin against God : he felt that in the presence 
of that awful recollection all lesser things about his con- 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



213 



duct grew scarce discernible, — as a little taper that is 
plainly seen in darkness is hardly beheld at all in the 
sun's brightest beams : and depend upon it, he did not 
mean to excuse his sin, but to say the very worst of 
it, when he said, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
sinned." And if it be, that even the sin that is most 
against man is more against God, you will see why it is 
that it is to God man must go in the last and great re- 
sort, to get the forgiveness of his sins. They are spe- 
cially done against God, and who but the God they have 
wronged and dishonored can forgive them ? They have 
blighted God's fair universe : they have damaged God's 
creatures : they have broken God's law : they have cast 
doubt on God's sure word: they have dared God's 
mighty power ! Who, then, can forgive them but God 
alone ! Yes, you who have wronged a friend or brother, 
— you who have lied against his fair fame, — you who 
have cheated him out of his hard-earned means, — you 
who have lifted the hand against his limb or life, — you 
who have made his life dark and his home desolate, — 
go, indeed, when you have been made to feel your guilt, 
go and confess your fault to him, go and ask his forgive- 
ness : bend your proud neck, come down from your 
haughty spirit, — if the cup of humiliation be a bitter 
one to drink, remember that you mixed it for yourself, 
and be thankful that there is any way, however lowly, 
though it makes flesh and heart to stoop, that can lead 



214 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



away from the endless doom you merit : but never think 
that when you have got your fellow-creature's forgive- 
ness, that that will do. No; remember that there is 
One whom it is a more serious thing to offend, against 
whom you have offended as well: remember that the 
wrong is done to God, which you thought of as done 
only to your fellow-man : go to Him, and seek to make 
peace there : though the bitterest hater of sin, He is the 
readiest to welcome back the truly repentant sinner : 
Tell Him all about your transgression, — you cannot 
conceal it, if you would, from the Searcher of hearts ; 
and if words fail you in the deep sense of your guilt, 
then take those which Solomon said for himself, but 
which will suit you well, and such as you ; and say 
" Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and when 
Thou hearest, forgive ! " 

I have time only to mention, as another thing which 
is taught us by our text, that prayer is the way to ob- 
tain the forgiveness of sins. You see Solomon looked 
forward to days when sinful beings should, under the 
consciousness of guilt, employ the natural and recognized 
means for getting that guilt forgiven. He took it for 
granted, that when men felt they needed forgiveness, 
they would pray to God to forgive them : and so he 
himself, in anticipation of very many prayers which 
would be offered for pardon, says, " Hear Thou in 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



215 



heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and when Thou nearest, 
forgive." But indeed it is so plain that when you want 
anything from God, the right way to get it is to ask for 
it : this is so completely the dictate of common sense, 
that the matter needs no enforcement or illustration. I 
may only remind you, as an encouragement to pray for 
forgiveness, of that gracious promise, " If ye ask any- 
thing in my name, I will do it." The only restriction 
to the large-hearted assurance is, that what is asked 
should be really good for us : and as there can be no 
question that forgiveness, implying all that we have 
seen it does imply, is truly good for us, we may regard 
the promise as absolute in this case ; and believe that if 
we heartily ask forgiveness in Christ's name, we are 
perfectly sure of obtaining it. And now, having, as I 
think, shown you the main truths which the text teaches 
us, let me in conclusion remind you, that we are living 
under a better dispensation than that under which the 
prayer in my text was first uttered : and let me ask you 
to attend to two Christian additions to the text. For- 
giveness is the great thing we have to ask for ourselves 
from God, now in the Christian day ; just as it was in 
the Jewish dawn : but there are two things which I 
ought to remind you of, as matters of especially Chris- 
tian origin, bearing upon this text, and upon the general 
prayer for forgiveness. 

One of these is, the new form which the prayer for 



216 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



forgiveness has assumed under the Christian dispensa- 
tion. Solomon's prayer was, " When Thou nearest, 
forgive." Christ's prayer is, " And forgive us our 
debts, as we forgive our debtors." Solomon's prayer 
is for pardon generally : pardon unlimited : simple for- 
giveness. Christ's prayer is for forgiveness up to a 
certain standard, and no higher : forgiveness defined 
and limited : in Christ's prayer we ask for such for- 
giveness as we are ready to grant, and no more. Any 
man might offer Solomon's prayer : not every man 
durst offer Christ's, if he weighed its meaning. And all 
this is very characteristic of Christianity, which is pre- 
eminently the religion of the heart. If the heart be not 
right, Christ's prayer is not a prayer for forgiveness ; it 
is an imprecation of wrath and woe. Think of the re- 
vengeful man, — the unforgiving man, — bending before 
God ; and praying Forgive me my trespasses, just as 
much as I forgive them that trespass against me ! What 
an awful prayer ! How true, that the very prayers of 
the ungodly are sin ! Think of a man feeling in his 
heart, "I don't forgive and I will not forgive such a 
one who has offended me " : then looking up to God and 
saying, " Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive his " : 
— that is, not at all ! Every time the unforgiving man 
utters the Lord's prayer, he prays that he may not be 
forgiven : he prays for his own eternal damnation ! And 
not only that : his prayer is an insult to the heart- 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



217 



searching God : he is making Christ's prayer bear the 
very opposite meaning from that which Christ intended 
that it should bear ; for surely that beautiful petition was 
meant to whisper to us, that before we venture to repeat 
it, our hearts should be purged of all enmity against any 
living mortal. Think of this, all of you, when you pray 
for forgiveness now. Remember that this is the only 
Christian form of the prayer for forgiveness. No Chris- 
tian can pray for forgiveness absolutely, as Solomon 
did : Christ's condition is always understood. Whether 
we bear it in mind or not, we shall get no more for- 
giveness than we are ready to give. And to prevent 
any mistake on this point, think of the first words Christ 
uttered after teaching his disciples his own prayer : 
" For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly 
Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not 
men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive 
your trespasses." Nothing can be plainer than that. 
And that is the Christian condition on which alone 
forgiveness can be found, or forgiveness need be 
sought. 

And our other remark upon the prayers for forgive- 
ness which we ought to offer, is one which is suggested 
by the very definition of Christian prayer. It is only 
that our prayers for forgiveness, as for every other 
blessing, should be Christian prayers; that is, prayers 
10 



218 



THE FIRST PRAYER 



offered in the name #nd in trust of the merits of Christ. 
It is not prayer now, just to ask God for what we want. 
In Solomon's days, that might have been prayer. But 
you have all been taught from childhood what prayer is 
now. It is " an offering up of our desires to God in the 
name of Christ? Not that the Saviour's name need 
always be formally mentioned, though it is well that 
even that should never be neglected : but that the 
prayer should be offered in simple dependence on His 
merits ; in simple hope of His intercession above, and 
of His Spirit's prompting within. Every blessing, we 
say, should be asked for Christ's sake : but even more 
than others, if that could be, the forgiveness which we 
owe entirely to His great Atonement. For, so far as 
we can see, God could not have forgiven any sin, but 
that Jesus lived and died. Only those washed and 
made white in His blood, can ever appear, faultless 
and forgiven, before the throne of God. " The chas- 
tisement of our peace was laid upon Him; and with 
His stripes we are healed." O, do we need to be ad- 
vised to plead, when we ask forgiveness, the only reason 
why we can hope to be forgiven ! If it is only for 
Christ's sake that God can forgive us, is it not the 
least we can do to ask that he would forgive us for 
Christ's sake! 

Such, then, are some plain thoughts upon the prayer 



IN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 



219 



for forgiveness, — expressed, as I trust, so plainly that 
every one here can understand every word that I have 
said. There are finer sounding things we might ask for 
than forgiveness : there is nothing we need so much, — ■ 
nothing for which it is more meet that sinful creatures 
like us should pray. It is not a pleasant thing to man's 
proud heart frankly to confess that he has done wrong, 
and humbly to supplicate pardon ; but it must be done, 
nevertheless, however hard it may be to do. And as 
we ask God for Christ's sake to forgive us all our 
iniquities, let us for our encouragement think of one 
Divine Being, of Whom when on earth it was said 
with truth, though said by His enemies, "This man 
receiveth sinners." And think that He, so merciful to 
the worst, was the " image of the Invisible God " : and 
as you bow in penitence before the Almighty, think that 
that kind face is looking down on you as you pray, — 
think that you are speaking and telling your story to 
that kindest and gentlest heart. And going now hand 
in hand with our Elder Brother, to pray to His Father 
and our Father, we may go with a holy boldness to 
which Solomon had no right, and we may urge a plea 
which Solomon did not know. And as we humbly con- 
fess our great unworthiness, — as we banish from our 
hearts every bitter or unkind feeling towards any hu- 
man being, — as we rest, with simple faith, on our Sav- 
iour's merits alone ; — the old words will suit us yet, as 



220 THE FIRST PRAYER EN SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 

they tell us of human nature's old want, and lead us 
to Him Who alone can supply it; — and our prayer 
will be, from the lip as from the heart, still " Hear 
Thou in Heaven Thy dwelling-place ; and when Thou 
nearest, forgive!" 



XIII. 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 

" For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God." — Romans viii. 19. 

O larger statement, no sublimer thought, will 
you find even upon the page of inspiration. 
For the word which is here translated the 
creature means all creation, — all that God made, 
whether animate or inanimate. And the phrase trans- 
lated the earnest expectation conveys the idea of a fixed, 
bent, rapt state of earnest looking forward, and look- 
ing far away, for something intensely longed for, that 
is yet in the dim distance before. And so, as we read 
the great Apostle's words, as we seek to picture to our 
minds their meaning, there rises before us, as some vast, 
majestic vision, the imagery of a whole world, a whole 
universe, — fields, trees, rivers, clouds and stars, — great 
nations, thronged cities, endless crowds of immortal be- 
ings, numberless hosts of creatures, animate yet with- 
out rational souls, — all waiting, watching, looking out ; 
standing (for such is the force of the word) with the 




222 THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



head thrust forward, and silently, eagerly, gazing far 
away for something hoped and longed for ; — some- 
thing that is slow, indeed, in coming, but that is sure 
to come at last. Such, and no less, is the picture which 
St. Paul desires to set before us in his sublime and com- 
prehensive assurance, that " the earnest expectation of 
the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons 
of God." 

It is no more than just that I should tell you, that 
this passage in which St. Paul sets forth the travail and 
expectancy of creation, has been the subject of very 
much debate among such as have written on the inter- 
pretation of Scripture. But without wearying you with 
any account of their discordant opinions, I have adopted 
the interpretation of the passage which is most generally 
received, and received by the most approved authorities ; 
and which appears the most consistent with the entire 
spirit of the verses of which the text forms the first. 
We find it stated there, that " the creature was made 
subject to vanity, not willingly " : which is understood 
as meaning that the entire creation was involved and 
deteriorated in the Fall of man. We find it stated too, 
that " the creature itself shall be delivered from the bond- 
age of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God " : which is understood as meaning that the en- 
tire creation shall participate in man's restoration ; that 
the disgrace of sin and sorrow shall yet be wiped away 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



223 



from Nature's beautiful face ; and that the dumb suffer- 
ings of the brute creation shall be ended if not compen- 
sated. And finally we find it stated that meanwhile, 
while sin and suffering last, all nature does as it were 
groan beneath them, eager to be delivered from them : 
"We know," says St. Paul, "that the whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." 
By a strong figure, the apostle represents all the uni- 
verse, even to the dumb brutes, even to the lifeless fields 
and rocks and trees, as doing what in strict fact only 
sentient and intelligent man could do : — grieving and 
sorrowing over the prevalence of misery and guilt, and 
longing for the day when these shall go forever : — 
awakened to a sense of the moral and physical evil to 
which it is subject, groaning under the bondage of its 
own corruption, and only sustained by the hope of a 
future emancipation into liberty worthy of the creature 
of God, and of a purification which shall bring it back 
to the goodness in which it was created at the first. In 
brief, the teaching of the entire passage is, that all nature 
has fallen : that all nature will be restored : that mean- 
while nature is in a state of suffering: but that this 
suffering is relieved by a constant, earnest, hopeful ex- 
pectation of better things. And thus it is, that " the 
earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
manifestation of the sons of God": waits, that is, for 
the day when sin and sorrow shall cease: when fair 



224 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



landscapes shall no longer form the setting (as it were) 
for human wickedness and woe : when only righteous- 
ness and happiness shall dwell in the new heavens and 
the new earth. 

In dwelling for a little upon the sublime thought sug- 
gested by the Apostle, let us arrange our reflections 
thus : Let us think, first, of the Fact that all Creation 
is in some sense fallen : next, of the Fact that all Crea- 
tion is in some sense earnestly expecting : and thirdly, 
of the End which, if the Apostle be right, is the object, 
possibly the unconscious object, of all her longings and 
desires. 

And first, of the Fact that all creation is in some 
sense fallen. 

It need hardly be said that only intelligent and re- 
sponsible man is capable of falling in that sense which 
involves the idea of guilt. Whatever fall may have 
passed upon the. world and upon the brute creation, has 
come through no fault of theirs : and whatever they may 
be called to suffer, can be regarded as the punishment 
of no sin on their part. And yet, I think that no re- 
flective man will deny that there is a sense, a true and 
a weighty sense, in which all the lower creation is in- 
volved in the Fall of Man ; and fell with Man when he 
fell. TTho is there that does not know what suffering 
man's sin, man's cruelty and man's thoughtlessness, in- 
flict day by day upon the poor dumb lower animals ? 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CPwEATION. 



225 



For this is a case in which it is eminently true, that 
" evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as by want 
of heart. ,, Who is there that does not know that the 
dumb creatures suffer because man fell : that the fact 
that man is cruel, impatient, thoughtless, — in short, sin- 
ful and fallen, — is the cause of incalculable anguish and 
suffering to these guiltless beings? Ah, the over-driven 
horse, urged beyond its speed and strength, the starved 
and tortured dog or cat, are witnesses to us (how 
often), as we walk the streets of this great city, that 
creatures which could not sin are yet involved in that 
suffering which is sin's sad result ! And it is worthy of 
remark, that even that conduct in inferior animals which 
appears to us to contain something of a moral element, 
— that which we call vice in an inferior animal; is al- 
ways the result of some wrong conduct upon man's 
part : anything that is properly wrong in the actions of 
a dumb creature, anything that looks wicked, or inten- 
tionally malignant, is imported into its conduct from 
some previous sin or error on the part of man. Have 
we not been taught, by one who is well entitled to the 
name of a practical philosopher, that if there ever ap- 
pears anything evil in the character of that noble and 
generous animal which works for us through all its life, 
though, so far as is revealed to us, with no rest remain- 
ing for it when its life is done, — it is because of some 
preceding evil, or mistake at least, in a human being : 
10* o 



226 THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



that there would be no such thing as a vicious horse, if 
there had not previously been a cruel, or an ignorant, 
or an impatient, or an injudicious man ? But there is 
no need to introduce what may be matter of debate, into 
a question about which there can be no debate : and such 
is our assertion, that the consequences of man's fall ex- 
tend even to the brutes that perish. They suffer, because 
man sinned. And no small measure of their suffering, 
has been actually the direct consequence of man's sin, as 
such. Think, for instance, what millions of innocent 
lives were cut short by the drowning waters of the 
Deluge ! Man's sin brought those waters : but they 
quenched many a poor dumb life into which sin had 
never entered. And think, too, what hosts of guiltless 
creatures have yielded up their lives as sacrifices for 
sin, — sin in which they had no share. When the 
Israelite came to seek the pardon of his transgression, 
he was not allowed to come, as we do, and present the 
spiritual sacrifice of a contrite heart, and plead the 
merit of the Redeemer's grand sacrifice offered once 
for all. No, the poor dove must die : the harmless 
lamb must shed its blood : the peaceful ox must be 
burnt on the altar: suffering, in God's mysterious ap- 
pointment, because man sinned : testifying to the eternal 
and fundamental truth, of the essential and indissoluble 
connection between suffering and sin. Now, we know 
God cares for oxen. Eely upon it, it was a thought to 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 227 



God, when the brute creation, all but a few representa- 
tives, perished at the Flood. Rely upon it, He did not 
overlook or forget the suffering of the poor lamb whose 
blood turned aside the Destroying Angel, nor of the 
beasts with whose blood under the law "almost all 
things were purged." You remember how among the 
reasons for sparing Nineveh, God did not overlook the 
circumstance that there was " much cattle there." Yes, 
brethren : there can be no doubt at all that the poor 
dumb creatures are involved in Man's Fall. 

But I said that the text teaches us as a Fact, that all 
creation is in some sense fallen : not only the sentient 
brutes, but the unconscious air, and woods, and streams. 
.Now as for the inanimate creation, of course, it cannot 
suffer consciously. Man, can both sin and suffer. The 
inferior animals can suffer but not sin. And as for the 
landscape, as for the inanimate universe, it can neither 
sin nor suffer. How, then, you will say, can it be in- 
volved in man's Fall ? And we reply, that it is a mis- 
take to fancy that a thing is perverted from the end 
contemplated by the Creator, only when it knows the 
fact and suffers from it. This world, this inanimate 
creation, is involved in man's fall, according to its na- 
ture : it is fallen, in the way and the sense in which, by 
the make of things, it is possible that it should be fallen. 
Of course, there is no guilt : it cannot sin. Of course, 
there is no pain : it cannot suffer. But there is perver- 



228 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



sion : degradation : turning of it aside from the wise, 
and kind, and beneficent purposes contemplated by the 
Creator : and in that sense Nature's fall is real and 
deep. You would almost think that Nature is obliged, 
by man's sin, unwillingly to do many thing3 which she 
would not do if she could help it. Noble means and in- 
struments are perverted to base and sinful ends. The 
atmosphere is constrained unwillingly to carry from the 
speaker's lip to the listener's ear, words which are false, 
which are impure, which are profane. Surely that 
beautiful, liquid ether was never made for that ! Cannot 
you almost personify it, and think of it as rebelling 
against the base use to which sinful man turns it? Food 
is constrained to strengthen for sinful deeds. Is it not 
hard, so to speak, upon the innocent grain, upon the 
generous grape, that they should be compelled, whether 
they will or no, to yield their energy to the arm of the 
midnight murderer, as readily as to the hand that does 
the deed of mercy and never tells the fellow-hand? Can 
you not imagine wholesome food and wine as mutely 
protesting against the base excesses of which man's sin 
so often makes them the instruments ? Can you not 
almost think that it is reluctantly that Nature suffered 
man to discover and to combine, from among her ele- 
ments, agencies of destruction and suffering ? And, 
since the days of the friar, who stumbled upon that 
combination of materials, separately innocuous, but to- 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



229 



gether so powerful to scorch and blast, which hides the 
modern battle-field with its sulphureous clouds ; think 
how great a share of human ingenuity has been directly 
given to wresting from Nature that which shall quench 
human life, which shall tear and torture. No doubt, my 
brethren, so long as the agencies of warfare are pos- 
sessed by any nation, they must be possessed by all na- 
tions, — and by none with stronger necessity than by 
our own, the great stay and hope of European freedom : 
but still, what a perversion of material resources and of 
human energies from their peaceful and natural uses 
there is in the armaments and munitions of war ! Ah, 
if there were no evil and angry passions in the heart of 
man : no treachery, no cruelty, no selfishness, no injus- 
tice ; there would be no wars nor rumors of wars : and 
no perversion of iron and oak from the arts of peace to 
the arts of destruction. Look at a ship of war, my 
friends. What a grand and imposing spectacle it is ! 
And in a fallen world, a necessary thing, too. But 
think, is it not one great proof that man is fallen ? 
And is it not one great aggregate of most valuable and 
noble means, distorted and perverted from their right 
and innocent ends ? Think of the costly material, think 
of the skill and science and industry, that have gone to 
make that a claw to tear, a tooth to bite, — a grand 
weapon of misery and destruction : and say if the con- 
sequences of man's fall do not reach to the oak in the 



230 THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



forest, the iron in the mine, the flax in the field, the 
very air and water ! Not, surely, for this did the oak- 
tree grow, and the flax wave, and the iron slowly ma- 
ture in the veins of the earth ! And, not lingering on 
individual instances of noble material agencies perverted 
to evil by man, — such, for instance, as the printing- 
press, that mighty agent, concerning which it is hard to 
say now-a-days whether it does most good or harm : 
think how the whole landscape is often darkened by the 
brooding cloud of sin ; how often climes where the sky 
is bright and the breeze fragrant and the earth charm- 
ing, are made dark and sad even to man's view, and 
how much darker and sadder to the pure eye of God, by 
the deep degradation and horrid cruelty of the savage 
races that dwell there ! You know how the good and 
kind Bishop felt that all in vain were the spicy breezes 
of Ceylon, and its incomparable material beauty, while 
only man was vile : that vainly the gifts of God were 
lavished, while the blinded heathen bowed to wood 
and stone. Think of the Yale of Siddim: outwardly 
" beautiful as the garden of the Lord 99 : yet bearing a 
race so evil that the thunder could no longer sleep, and 
the fire of heaven was called down to cleanse its foul 
infection away. And there the very scene was not 
merely darkened by the moral evil : it had to perish 
along with it. You remember how strikingly it has 
been said, " Beautiful scenery remained, spread over 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 231 



the world ; but one part of it had sunk, and vanished 
forever. The natural beauty and the human wicked- 
ness were struck out of the universe at one tremendous 
blow. At that one spot, it is far towards four thousand 
years, since Nature bloomed and man sinned, — for the 
last time ! " 

Thus, then, we have seen that it is truth the Apostle 
tells, when he says that all Nature is in some sense 
fallen: involved in Man's fall. But another fact as- 
serted in the text is, that all Nature is waiting for 
better days. "The creature," that is, all creation, is 
in a condition of "earnest expectation." In the case 
of the first fact, that Nature is fallen, we can find a 
thousand proofs from our own experience, that the 
Apostle's statement is just : and this second one, of 
Nature's expectancy, might be received upon the same 
testimony : though it is the authority of revelation 
which here comes in to clear the teaching of experience 
from the suspicion of transcendentalism or mysticism. 
And, indeed, all things are unconsciously looking for- 
ward. There is a vague, dumb sense, that surely better 
things are coming. All conscious things live in an un- 
defined hope. We can discern many indications that this 
is so. How ready human beings are to listen to the 
assurance that there is "a good time coming": and 
wherefore ? Not, surely, that there is any great sign as 



232 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



jet of its approach : but simply from some vague, gen- 
eral belief that surely evil will one day die, and the 
reign of good begin ! All men are vaguely looking for- 
ward : expecting something, they cannot say what : but 
only that things will be not always as now ; — will some 
day be better than now. Why does the man who has 
got abundance of money, more than he can ever spend, 
— and no one to leave it to, — why does he still pinch 
and save as before : why, but from some shadowy look- 
ing-forward, which he does not care to define? Why 
do most men, when they begin any task, feel eager to 
get through with it: why, but for that onward bent, 
that "earnest expectation" that is in all "the crea- 
ture"? Men are waiting, they know not for what: 
but there is a strange, ceaseless look-out for something 
farther : not to be explained by human philosophy, but 
to be unravelled by this text. And we can discern 
traces of the same feeling in inferior natures. Why 
does the poor hack lean to his collar so eagerly, and 
toil up the steep street overburdened, but from some 
vague, dull, confused hope that surely all this will end. 
And it is no transcendentalism to ask you, whether 
you have not felt, when you have gone forth on a 
fair summer evening, and stood in some sweet scene 
in the country stillness, — as if all Nature, — trees and 
fields and twilight sky, — were waiting for something: 
wanting something, not here as yet? You remember 



THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 233 



how the poet describes a landscape beautiful, complete : 
but he looks upon it : and somehow he feels that " there 
lacketh something still." And the great German poet 
and philosopher Goethe, has recorded, that he never 
could look on a beautiful summer landscape, without 
feeling as if it were waiting for something, asking for 
something, which was not there. 

And so we come to ask, What is the End for which 
all creation is so earnestly waiting ? All Nature is 
fallen : all Nature, man, beast, inanimate things, — is 
looking forward : Looking forward for what? 

Ah brethren, you who feel in yourselves a constant 
craving for something unattained as yet, believe it, it is 
no earthly end that will satisfy the longing of your 
nature ! There is this remarkable peculiarity about 
all earthly ends, that whenever you have attained the 
end which is at present the object of your hopes and 
wishes, you will see another before you, and feel you 
cannot be content till you have reached that : and, that 
reached, you will see before you another still. You 
think now, some of you here, perhaps, that if you could 
only reach such or such an end on which you have set 
your heart, it would be well with you: you would be 
perfectly happy and content. The poor man, barely 
keeping his head above water as he struggles for bread 
for his children, thinks how happy he would be could he 



234 THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 



only be sure of always finding food and raiment for 
himself and his own. That end reached, another is 
proposed : and as the man rises gradually to platform 
after platform in the social world, the view extends 
before him. The poor man wishes to be rich : the rich 
man longs for a recognized position in society : the man 
who has got that thinks how pleased he would be could 
he obtain a title, fame, nobility : ah, there is no end of 
it ! The man in town thinks how pleasant it is to live 
in the country : the man in the country how pleasant to 
live amid the society of the town. Yes, brethren : 
there is more in this than the mere morbid feeling of 
restless discontent : every human being, vaguely dissat- 
isfied with his present state, is a new witness to the 
grand principle, that "the earnest expectation of the 
creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
God ! " You know that you are always looking onward : 
you are always postponing the true enjoyment of life to 
some indefinite period in the future : ah, my brethren, it 
is for no earthly end you are looking onward : you may 
not know it, but you are looking onward to that period 
when sin and sorrow shall cease ! That is the only end 
in the universe that shall absolutely satisfy the great 
craving for happiness and rest which is in the centre of 
man's nature: That is the only summit on reaching which 
you will see no farther summit stretching away beyond. 
What a blessing it is, my friends, to be told what it is 



THE EXPECTANCY OP CREATION. 235 

we really need! Ah, men in all ages felt the great, 
vague longing : the Christian only knows what it is that 
shall fully satisfy that longing : we know that " man's 
chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever": ho- 
liness and happiness, Christ's beatific presence in heaven, 
it is these towards which we are blindly reaching for- 
ward : and " the earnest expectation of the creature," 
the dumb, unconscious yearnings of man's heart, can 
be sated by no earthly end, by no sublunary fruition : 
they are waiting and watching for the accomplishment 
of all things, — for the " manifestation of the sons of 
God!" 

And so, Christian friends, the single thing within the 
range of possibility, that will satisfy the soul's longings, 
the expectancy of all Creation, is to find that assured 
part in Christ, which shall enable us to go to God and 
rest in Him as a reconciled, loving Father in Jesus. 
By the make of our being, we never can be right, till 
we lay our weary head upon the bosom of our God. 
" Thou madest us for Thyself," said the wise old Father 
of the Church : " and our souls are restless till they find 
rest in Thee ! " It is vain, my friends, it is utterly vain, 
to think to find rest, peace, happiness, satisfaction, any- 
where else. There will always be something lacking, 
till we rest in God. It is something more than the 
utterance of exalted piety, — it is the sober state- 
ment of a philosophic truth, the psalmist's exclamation, 



236 THE EXPECTANCY OF CREATION. 

" Whom have I in heaven but Thee ; and there is none 
upon the earth that I desire beside Thee ! " There are 
those on earth that you love : there are those in heaven 
whom you venerate : but there is none that can fill the 
place of God. We fancy, vainly, that if we could but 
reach this or that end, prized and beloved, we should be 
right : could we but reach that, it would be well with 
us : but 0, vain, vain is the fancy that we ever can be 
complete till we are in heaven with our Blessed Sa- 
viour, clearly seen and fully enjoyed at last. You who 
are young and hopeful ; you in the spring months of 
life, you may hardly believe that this can be so : you 
may find it hard to believe that no imaginable worldly 
wealth, honor, love, happiness, could fill the yearning's 
of your heart : but O, trust it, there is something within 
you that will not be put off with these : there is a thirst 
and a craving which these can never slake. For " the 
earnest expectation of the creature," the dumb uncon- 
scious longing of all creation, — from the immortal spirit 
of man, down to the poor shadowy consciousness of the 
unreasoning brute, yea down to the waiting landscape in 
the still twilight of summer, — " waiteth for " nothing 
meaner, nothing more mortal, nothing less precious, 
nothing more evanescent, than " the manifestation of the 
sons of God ! " 



XIV. 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



" For none of us liveth to himself ; and no man dieth to himself." 
— Romans xiv. 7. 



of us. There can be no doubt at all, that in a very real 
and solemn sense, " None of us liveth to himself, and no 
man dieth to himself." And it might strike each one of 
us with an awful conviction of responsibility, if we were 
enabled to read back the history of our own life ; and if 
w r e were made to know what a tremendous influence we 
have, quite unconsciously, wielded over some of our 
fellow-creatures. There was a day, perhaps, when in 
the hearing of some young person whose character was 
yet unformed, and easily susceptible of impressions good 
or bad, some one here may have said, hastily and 
thoughtlessly, some word, — some uncharitable, suspi- 
cious, cynical, sceptical word, — which, being taken up 
and retained by that young person's memory with that 




E should all, perhaps, feel something like ter- 
ror, if it were brought home to us how true, in 
one sense, that statement is about every one 



238 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



readiness and tenacity with which our memory does too 
often take up and retain that which is evil (and there is 
not a sadder proof that our nature is fallen) ; — being so 
taken up and retained, and often recurring to that 
young person's recollection, germinated into something 
in thought, feeling, or action, infinitely worse than ever 
you dreamt of; but for which, notwithstanding, you are 
in some measure responsible in the sight of God. There 
is many a godless man this day. who is encouraging 
himself in the way to ruin and perdition, by thinking of 
some foolish or sinful word or deed of a professing 
Christian. And on the other hand, we may thankfully 
believe, that there are people on this earth, leading holy 
lives, and going on towards glory in heaven, in whom 
all that good dates from some solemn word said by a 
believer who never knew in this world what that word 
was to do ; in whom all that good began with the hear- 
ing of a sermon that was preached under a specially 
desponding sense of uselessness, — or, earlier than that, 
with a mother's prayers, which she died thinking went 
all for nothing. Yes, brethren, we go on through life, 
and at the last we die, exercising a great unconscious 
influence upon those around us : an influence whose ex- 
tent will never be known till the day when the secrets 
of all hearts shall be revealed. And the humblest per- 
son exercises this influence just as truly as the might- 
iest. If the character of the poor slave is formed by his 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



239 



owner and taskmaster, the character of the owner and 
taskmaster is just as truly formed by the slave. And 
the little child that died before it ever spoke an articu- 
late sentence, may have done more than the wisest and 
greatest to permanently affect the whole character and 
life of its parents : by its life, and never more than by 
its death, it may have brought them to a serious care as 
to the great concern of salvation never felt before : and 
doubtless, in many cases, when souls have been brought 
in childlike faith to the Redeemer, it was by the hand 
of a little child. There is a sense in which the most 
selfish man, — the most self-seeking, the most self-con- 
tained, cannot live and die, to himself. He will influ- 
ence those w T ho know him, by his whole life ; by the 
tone of it, by the atmosphere that breathes from it. He 
will act on those around him, as with the gentle but 
never-ceasing force of a quiet current, setting either to 
what is better or to what is worse. Every professing 
Christian here is as a legible Epistle, known and read 
of all men. By his entire life, he is saying to all who 
know him, " One thing is needful : Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness : I am but a 
stranger and pilgrim on the earth, and heaven is my 
home " : or else he is saying to all who know him, by his 
entire life, " All these things are very well to talk of, 
but give me the main chance : worldly wealth and emi- 
nence and comfort and enjoyment are the great solid 



240 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



things after all!" My friends, have you not known 
professing Christians whose whole life was crying out 
that, as with a trumpet's tongue : and only God knows 
what evil such men do, who say one thing with the lip, 
and just the opposite with the life ! And as we cannot 
live to ourselves, neither can we die to ourselves. Our 
death is the testing-time of all our life : it is the crown 
and sum of it : it is the thing that fixes the character of 
it all. And what an incalculable difference in the prac- 
tical influence on others that may come from a death ! 
Think of the callous, hardening, chilling effect of a death 
of which the man that hears, says, " Ah, he 's gone : no 
great loss to anybody but himself" : and then think of 
the cheering, softening, thoughtful effect of a death of 
which you hear, and say, " Well, religion must be a 
real thing and a wonderful thing, to have kept a human 
being up in suffering and in death as it did there ! " 
And very naturally the wish will follow, — " May we die 
in such a way as that ! " And even the worldly and bad- 
hearted Balaam was lifted up for a little above his world- 
liness and wickedness, when he said, " Let me die the 
death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his ! " 

So true is it that our text says, " None of us liveth 
to himself and no man dieth to himself." We shall 
every one of us be affecting those around us, for evil or 
good, while we live ; and when we die. 

There is another obvious sense, in which the text 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



241 



says true of most of us : perhaps of all who are here. 
There are many of you who have much depending on 
you, and depending on your life ; there are many of you 
whose worldly work is rather for your children than for 
yourselves : and even the young among us, who have 
no one that looks to them for daily bread, might know 
that those who support them are in truth dependent on 
them too; — that their turning out well will gladden 
their parents' hearts, — that their turning out ill would 
wound and break them ; — that for most of the peace 
and joy and hope that people in middle age look for 
in this world, they look to their children, — fondly hop- 
ing that all the errors into which they fell, will be cor- 
rected in the fresh experiment of a new life, and that 
the ill-fortune that came across their plans and hopes 
will in that be unknown. And we are so dependent on 
one another, — our interests are so mingled and inter- 
twined ; — that in this sense too, " None of us liveth to 
himself, and no man dieth to himself." You cannot 
tell how far the influences, moral and even material, 
of a life or a death, may stretch away. Indeed, so 
thoroughly is it God's will that in this world the in- 
terests of human beings should be linked together, 
that the most manifest effects reaching to millions of 
people, come of causes in the feeling and conduct of 
human beings thousands of miles away, and never 
seen nor known. A fancy, in a savage race, for some 
11 p 



242 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



article of British manufacture, for bright-colored cloth, 
for knives or looking-glasses, will increase the com- 
forts of many homes in a great manufacturing town : 
will give the little children better food and clothes, 
and will send them to school. Or a race of slave- 
holders arise in war for the great right of holding their 
fellow-men in slavery : and the consequence is felt by 
thousands of starving workmen, and their wives and 
little ones, in a country three thousand miles across the 
sea ; and directly or indirectly it reaches the purse of 
most people in Britain. There are chapels in Scotland 
that are not endowed, because of a bloody war on the 
other side of the great Atlantic : there are heathen peo- 
ple to whom the means of sending the Gospel of Christ 
are diminished by the same sad cause. My friends, 
there is no end of illustration of this text, regarded as 
setting out the great fact of human inter-connection and 
inter-dependence. The millions of our race are linked 
together in the most wonderful way : it is only gradu- 
ally that we are finding out that the welfare of one 
race or nation is the welfare of all. We are learning 
to cast away the infidel question, " Am I my brother's 
keeper?" We are learning the economic truth and 
profitableness of words in which a heathen writer set 
forth a sentiment so thoroughly and essentially Chris- 
tian : " I am a human being," he said : " and I feel that 
I have something to do with everything human ! " 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



243 



Are not these words like the echo of his, who drew 
his inspiration from a far higher spring than any mere 
human genius ; and who declared, taught by the Holy 
Ghost and no other, that " None of us liveth to himself 
and no man dieth to himself ! " 

Yes, my friends, there are some, who could not d<s 
well, for a while yet, without you. There are those> 
by whom almost every human being would be missed, 
if he were taken away. We do not live entirely for 
ourselves: and though it may be true, as the great 
French divine said, that we shall die alone, each by 
himself, it will not be each jfor himself. Yery few lives 
could be quenched without loss and grief to some one. 
Yery few graves are opened and closed but to the sad- 
dening of some hearts. 

I have lengthened these remarks, because the thoughts 
that have been present to us are interesting in them- 
selves, and will readily suggest to you important lessons. 
And indeed, in discourses founded on my text, it is a 
common thing to dwell entirely upon these two thoughts, 
as though they summed up the teaching of the text. 
But it is not so. And although we are far from ventur- 
ing to say that either or both of them might not have 
been present to the Apostle's mind when he wrote this 
verse, directed and inspired by God's Holy Spirit, still 
it is quite certain that his main purpose in writing the 
text was to set out an entirely different truth. And 



2U 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



what seems our duty, in trying to understand a text of 
Holy Scripture and profit by it, is, not to force upon the 
words, or draw from them, what may seem the most 
striking or effective meaning they will bear ; but remem- 
bering Whose words they truly are, remembering that 
they are God's words to us, and inspired by the Blessed 
Spirit, to seek to understand what it is that God is say- 
ing to us in them : and what is the mind of the Blessed 
Spirit in them. 

Now when we look at our text, not as a detached 
statement of a truth ; but standing where it does, as a 
step in an argument ; the Apostle's meaning is quite 
plain. He has been arguing for charity, forbearance, 
toleration, among Christians, in matters not of vital im- 
portance : a lesson not less desirable and needful in 
Scotland in the nineteenth century, than it was at Rome 
in the first. He has been trying to get people to be- 
lieve, that though a man think differently from you and 
me, on any point short of the great essential doctrines 
of Salvation, he may yet be a conscientious Christian 
man, acting according to his light ; and, as in the pres- 
ence of God, trying to do what will please Him. In 
the little matters of ceremony and observance of times 
and seasons, in non-essentials in short, St. Paul tells us 
that the rule is that every man should be fully per- 
suaded in his own mind that what he thinks or does is 
right : and if good men differ from us, — if they like 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



245 



Episcopacy best while we like Presbytery best, — or if 
they prefer what is called the Voluntary Principle in 
ecclesiastical arrangement, while we prefer exceedingly 
the principle of all Christians till very recent days, of 
a national profession of Christianity and a National 
Church, — why, then to give them credit for being fully 
persuaded in their own minds too. We are, to sum up, 
to recognize as Christians all whom God would recog- 
nize : and strongly and heartily as you and I may hold 
to the venerable and beloved Church of our fathers, I 
know there is not one of us who fancies that if a soul be 
washed in Christ's blood and sanctified by the working 
of God's Spirit, that soul will be rejected by God be- 
cause he dissents from us : there is not one of us who 
fancies that acceptance with God and admission to 
heaven will turn in the least measure on such things as 
these : and if there be people who think differently, — 
if there was a good man once who solemnly declared 
that he could not recognize as a brother- Christian any 
one who did not hold his peculiar views as to the 
proper way of appointing ministers to vacant parishes, 
— why, all that just shows that there may be very sin- 
cere Christians who have very narrow and unchristian 
ways of judging their fellow-men. " He that regardeth 
the day," says St. Paul, " regardeth it unto the Lord : 
and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth 
not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for 



246 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



he gireth God thanks : and he that eateth not, to the 
Lord he eateth not ; and giveth God thanks." Every- 
thing the true Christian does, you see the Apostle says, 
he does as for his God and Saviour : and then comes in 
our text : " For none of us" says St. Paul, speaking of 
all Christians, and telling something that was to be 
taken for granted as a matter about which there was no 
doubt whatsoever, — u None of us liveth to himself, and 
no man dieth to himself." Let me tell you here, that 
the apparent widening of the sense in the second clause 
of the next, no man taking the place of none of us, 
appears only in our translation : for in the original lan- 
guage, though the word translated of us is not repeated, 
the word translated no man is precisely the same word 
which in the former clause is translated none. Thus you 
see St. Paul, in the text, is not laying down a principle 
as to all human beings : he is not going into the philos- 
ophy of our responsibility for our influence on others, 
nor is he speaking of the inter-dependence and mutual 
linking each to each of us men : but he is reminding 
those whom he addresses of a matter on which they are 
all agreed ; to wit, that it is a thing distinctive and char- 
acteristic of all Christians, that everything they do they 
do for God. Xone lived to himself; none died to him- 
self : If we live, we live unto the Lord ; if we die, we 
die unto the Lord : Whether we live, therefore, or die, 
we are the Lord's. And thus the great truth taught in 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



247 



the text is, that the Christian does not live to himself, 
in the sense of seeking his own advantage and ease and 
pleasure ; in the sense of thinking mainly of self, and 
-self-interest. The Apostle is not telling us, as he would 
have been telling us in the formerly suggested senses of 
our text, of something that men must do whether they 
will or not ; of something that is a condition of our 
being, and that we can no more resist than' we can 
resist the law of gravitation, or the laws of heat and 
light. He is telling us of something that Christians do 
of their own accord, — with their heart's full consent, — 
and not just because they are driven by a force too 
mighty to resist, and so cannot help it. He reminds us 
how the Christian is one who " wherein he is called, 
therein abides with God " : one to whom, in the higher 
attainments of the spiritual life, " to live is Christ and 
to die is gain," because to die is " to depart and be with 
Christ." And there is something in the mention of not 
even dying to ourselves, that is echoed and interpreted 
in that ancient prayer, in which believers say, " We 
commend to Thee, O Lord, now and forever, our soul 
and body, our mind and thoughts, our prayers and our 
desires, our life and our death." And the state to which 
believers are in the text spoken of as having attained, 
is that for which the good Anglican divine prayed : 

" Teach me, my God and King, 
In all things Thee to see: 



248 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



And what I do in anything, 
To do it as for Thee." 

Thus St. Paul, in the text, is speaking of Christian 
people ; and is telling of something which it is most im- 
portant for us to remember is characteristic of them all. 
And this is, that their will is subordinated to God's ; 
that they do not seek chiefly or only for worldly profit 
or pleasure ; that their great end is not to get on in life, 
but rather " to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." 
Now, we all know, that in this sense of the phrase, 
many men do live entirely to themselves and not at all 
to God. There are people who could not seriously say 
that from Monday morning to Saturday night, — that is, 
through all their work-day time, — they bestow any real 
thought or pains to the end of reaching anything be- 
yond the horizon of this world — ■ beyond the realm of 
time and sense. They work to get food and raiment 
and a home for their children and themselves : to rise a 
little in life : to provide some store for their family after 
they shall be gone. Now all this is right : it would be 
holy work if it were done as for the Saviour, and as in 
His presence : it would be holy work if all the while 
you did it you were looking beyond the mere worldly 
task, — looking through the glass to the Golden City 
beyond, instead of merely looking on the glass and stop- 
ping there : but if in all that work, most fit and right in 
itself, the thrifty mother as she stitches the garments of 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



249 



her little ones or hears their lessons, or the hard- 
wrought father as he toils and pinches for their provis- 
ion, ]ooks no farther than this world, — then, self-forget- 
ting as the father and mother may be, they are doing 
the very thing St. Paul means when he speaks of Kving 
to one's self! And still more plainly does he incur that 
condemnation, the heartless selfish egotist who lives to 
gratify his own inclinations ; to please and serve and 
indulge himself. And whether this self-indulgence be 
in the gross forms of sloth, and appetite ; or in the more 
sublimated form of the gratification of a refined and lux- 
urious taste ; the man who never sets God before him, 
and never honestly works to do good to his fellow-sin- 
ners, lives as thoroughly to himself if he gives himself 
to the collecting of pictures, or books, or curiosities, as 
the mere glutton or drunkard or sluggard could. Every 
human being that is not trying to live to God, is living 
to himself. For there are but the two ways, living for 
time and for eternity, living for this world and for the 
next, accepting Christ and rejecting Him, being regen- 
erated and sanctified by God's spirit and being left with 
the old sinful nature. Christian brethren, to what a 
searching and humbling test it brings us, to remember 
these plain truths ! That the believer's wish is, or must 
it be said ought to be, to do and bear God's will, and to 
put his own wishes aside. It is not his great end to get 
on in life, to grow rich and honored, to enjoy comfort 
11* 



250 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



and pleasure, to gain a little advance in social standing 
Such are the natural aims of all unconverted persons : 
they wish, naturally, for the best they know. But the 
Christian knows of something better than worldly good, 
and seeks for that! He sets his affection on things 
above, not on things on the earth. He has been assured 
that a saving interest in Christ is the one thing needful ; 
and that such worldly prosperity as God knows is good 
for us, will be given to us if we " win Christ." And so 
the believer's desire and prayer are, that he may be 
enabled humbly to take the discipline God sends, if it 
be but sanctified by the Blessed Spirit. " God's will be 
done, not mine," is the utterance of his very heart. 
And he knows that God's will is his pardon and sanctifi- 
cation : that the very best thing that can befall him is, 
that God's will be done ! 

I have spoken of a refined and sublimated way of 
representing that essential selfishness and worldline^s 
which is wrapt up in the Scriptural idea of living to 
one's self. It is probable that as I spoke of it, some of 
you would recall a brilliant chapter by a brilliant 
author, commending living to one's self as the best and 
happiest life. What that author understands by it is, 
living according to our own views, and never thinking 
of catching the eye or applause of others. It is " living 
in the world, as in it. not of it. It is as if no one knew 
there was such a person, and you wished no one to know 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELFo 



251 



it : it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of 
things, not an object of attention and curiosity in it : to 
take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in 
the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to 
make or meddle with it. He who lives wisely to him- 
self and his own heart, looks at the busy world through 
the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in 
the fray. He hears the tumult, and is still." * 

Such are the eloquent words in which living to one's 
self is put in its most refined and least repulsive way. 
But is not this, after all, just making our own ease and 
comfort the great thing ? Is it not just to say that it 
might disquiet us, might fever us, to do the work God 
sets us in this world, — to battle with evil and to strive 
for the right, — and so we shall hide ourselves in a 
hole, and dastardly shrink away ? Yes, the life thus 
sketched is as thoroughly selfish and self-seeking a life, 
as his, who in the most degrading way seeks to attract 
the notice of others. Man's chief end is not quietly to 
enjoy himself, any more than it is conspicuously to get 
on and grow famous. Listen to the noble declaration 
of truth and lesson from it : " Ye are not your own, ye 
are bought with a price : therefore glorify God in your 
body, and in your spirit, which are God's ! " And O 
how different from that easy epicureanism of the mor- 
alist is the great Apostle's sublime resolution, that 

* Hazlitt. 



252 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



" with all boldness, as always, so now, Christ shall be 
magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by 
death ! " 

Now, Christian friends, here in my text we have all a 
test given to us, by which we may try the reality of our 
Christian profession and character. We all profess and 
call ourselves Christians : we all hope to be saved 
through Christ : we all trust, humbly trust, that we 
have believed in Him. Well, there are consequences 
that will follow if we have done so. And a very 
marked one, about which there should be no doubt, 
is that of which St. Paul speaks to us here. Is there 
not something striking in the simple, easy way, in which 
the Apostle says these words, almost in a parenthesis, 
and not taking the trouble to support them by any ar- 
gument, — as if 4 he felt that here was something so per- 
fectly unquestionable about the people he was addressing, 
that it needed only to be named ? Ah, he must have 
been sure of his men ! He must have so read their 
spirits as to know that they were right with God. For 
we cannot think that he deliberately gave them credit for 
what he knew they did not possess ! Now would it be a 
safe thing for any one preaching from this pulpit, to look 
round upon the congregation and say, We differ one from 
another, we who are here, in a great many respects : 
some of us think and feel one way, and some of us 
another way, in political matters, and aesthetical : some 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



253 



would like this, and some would like that : but there is 
one thing certain, one thing in which we are all agreed 
and alike : " None of us liveth to himself, and none of 
us will die to himself ! " O, if the Apostle Paul, stand- 
ing in this church to-day, were to say these words to us ; 
should we listen with the composure of men who knew 
that they were being spoken of no better than they de- 
serve : or should we not feel anything honest within us 
prompting us to cry out, O don't give us credit for that : 
we don't deserve it : we may be trying to attain to that, 
but we are far away yet from it : we dare not say that 
we are living to God and Christ : we know that we are 
seeking too much our own profit and honor and comfort 
and pleasure ; we are living far too much to ourselves ! 
O let us pray for more grace, Christian friends, that we 
may be delivered from this sin, that lingers so long; 
that we may all live more to God ! Self-seeking is a 
bad sign of us. Let it be our desire rather to deny 
ourselves, — to crucify the flesh with the affections and 
lusts, — to follow Christ, taking up our cross daily ! It 
is our business, as believers, to please God, and not our- 
selves ; thankfully remembering that we never please 
God so well, as when we take the straight and steep 
path that leads in the end to rest and glory ! 

And you know, brethren, that this great test and 
mark of the Christian, given by St. Paul in the text, is 
one that is thoroughly accepted by people who are not 



254 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



Christians. You know bow cheap those that are with- 
out hold the Christian profession and the fair words of 
the man in whom all that is tainted with the plague- 
spot of selfishness, or self-seeking, or self-conceit. A 
believer of high pretension to grace and spirituality, yet 
eagerly grasping at money and preferment, at social 
standing and recognition. — you know how such a one 
is a stumbling-block, and is named by godless people 
with a smile or a sneer. And you know, too, how the 
appearance of that eye mainly to self-interest and self- 
advancement, mars and clogs all the efforts a Christian 
man makes to do good. Just in proportion as you feel 
that a man is forgetting himself, and what you think of 
him, is the power he has to move you. to convince you, 
to profit you. It is the great secret of spiritual useful- 
ness, the ceasing to live to yourself! And the self-seek- 
ing minister of religion, eager for worldly promotion 
and reputation and applause, — what a useless crea- 
ture he is towards profiting and comforting souls : how 
light we hold his counsel and warning ! But that mes- 
senger is indeed powerful, with better strength than 
man's, who we feel is never thinking of himself ; but of 
us. and his great message ! 

Xow it is natural for us all to wish to get on ; to be 
among the rising people in our vocation. But O, there 
is another end, infinitely better and worthier ! Let us 
try to live to our Saviour ; to grow in grace ; to bless 



LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 



255 



our fellow-sinners; to do some worthy work in this 
world, which may remain after we are away. And so 
our life, lived as before God, will serve His cause in this 
world: and our death, its sight and its remembrance, 
may do good when we are gone. 

It seems a curious thing, indeed, to talk of God being 
glorified in us, such poor weak sinful creatures as we 
know ourselves to be : and to talk of Christ being mag- 
nified in our imperfect lives, all errors and repentances, 
and in our lowly death, with its weakness and pain. 
Yet so it is. " They glorified God in me," said St. Paul 
of those who heard of his conversion : and God shall 
be glorified in each of us, being truly converted to God. 
And if we make it our resolution and endeavor, that, by 
the all-sufficient grace of the Blessed Spirit, none of us 
shall henceforth live to himself, and none of us shall die 
to himself, — then true it is that Christ shall be magnified 
in us, — poor sinful yet redeemed and sanctified crea- 
tures, whether in life or in death! 



XV. 



THE COMING NIGHT. 

" The night cometh." — St. John ix. 4. 

VEN on a bright summer morning, the man 
who has a long journey before him pushes on 
briskly and actively. He does not saunter by 
the way if he is a man of energy and sense. And why ? 
Because he knows he has only a limited time ; and he 
must make the most of it. The sky above is all blue 
and bright : there is not a cloud : the sun is rising high- 
er and higher: yet, however little appearance there 
may be of it yet, he knows that " the night cometh." He 
knows that far away as yet, — away towards the East, 
a deep and mighty shadow is stealing onward over the 
world. Before it all is activity and cheerfulness and 
exertion : behind it all is quietness and repose ; man's 
labor has ceased. He knows that when once that shad- 
ow has come up to the place where he is, he can jour- 
ney on no longer. So he feels that he must make the 
most of the day while it lasts ; for " the night cometh." 
The psalmist speaks our experience when he says that 




THE COMING NIGHT. 



257 



after the sun has arisen, " Man goeth forth to his work, 
and to his labor, — until the evening." But when the 
evening shadows fall long, and the evening breezes 
whisper softly ; then, in all ordinary cases, man's labors 
cease. And night is the time for rest, not for working : 
whatever our day's task may be, we must see to finish it 
before night comes. 

There is hardly a thing more natural than to do what 
Christ does in our text ; — to extend this principle to a 
longer day, the day of life ; and to a darker night, the 
night of death. How naturally we speak of the morn- 
ing of life, — meaning infancy and childhood : how nat- 
urally of the evening of life, meaning the decline into 
age. And how naturally, as the light fades away, and the 
shadows gather, do we trace in all this the resemblance 
to approaching death ! Indeed it is by figures, drawn 
from the passing over of day and the coming on of night, 
that we just as often as not describe the life and death 
of man. Who is there that does not understand the 
old man's meaning, when he says his sun is fast going 
down ! 

And in this case also, there is the same practical les- 
son as in the other. Here too we are called on to make 
the most of our time, because it is limited. Here too 
we are bidden to make the best of our day, because "the 
night cometh." It was in this sense that Christ spoke 
the words of the text. He had a work to do : and He 

Q 



258 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



gives His reason for missing no opportunity of doing it ; 
for losing no time in doing it. " I must work the works 
of Him that sent me while it is yet day : the night coni- 
eth, wherein no man can work." His life and His min- 
istry were drawing to a close : and if He was to do His 
work at all, He must do it soon. He had now an oppor- 
tunity of working a cure upon the Sabbath-day : He had 
already risked His life in doing so : for this offended the 
Pharisees and priests. However, He would not lose 
His opportunity. I may run risk by this, — it seems as 
if He said : — may I not put it off till to-morrow ? Nay, 
I have but little time before me ; life's day is drawing 
to its close : I must do this work while the day lasts ; — 
for " the night cometh ! " 

There was nothing in this way of thinking that was 
personal to our Blessed Saviour : the self-same consid- 
erations apply to you and me. The self-same reason 
should weigh with us. There are many things which 
this is a reason for. There are many things we ought 
to do ; many things we ought to leave undone ; because 
" the night cometh." And perhaps some of you may 
remember that the greatest of English moralists felt this 
so strongly, that on the dial of his watch, — ready to 
catch his eye whenever he looked at it, — he had these 
words engraved in their original tongue: — " For the 
night cometh." He thought it fit, that every time he 
looked to see how time was going on, he might be re- 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



259 



minded of the end of it. He thought there was some- 
thing he might be the better for remembering, at the 
commencement of every engagement, in every company, 
in every place, in every occupation ; in the bustle of the 
street when crowds of men went by, — in the quiet 
chamber over his papers and his books where the hours 
passed on so silently, — in the view of regal state, and 
youthful beauty ; — still something worth remembering 
in that most suggestive truth expressed in the simple 
words, — " For the night cometh ! " 

Let us, with humble prayer for the guidance of God's 
Spirit, look for a little at these words of Christ. Let us 
consider certain lessons they teach us : certain things 
we ought to do, or to leave undone, because " the night 
cometh." 

The most obvious and important of these is that sug- 
gested by our Saviour Himself. It is that we ought to 
do now the work we have to do : to set ourselves imme- 
diately to life's great work. This, you will remember, 
was the lesson which the wisest of men drew from the 
same thought. He said, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with thy might : For there is no knowledge, 
nor wisdom, nor device in the grave, whither thou goest." 
And certainly the most obvious lesson from the truth that 
time will come to an end, is to make the most of it while 
it lasts. And life's great work, you need not be remind- 
ed, is the care of your salvation. The great lesson, then, 



260 



THE COMING NIGHT- 



which by pre-eminence we learn from our text, is that we 
should see to it, while the day of life lasts, to gain an as- 
sured interest in the Redeemer. But before thinking of 
this, let us think for a little upon some of the other teach- 
ings of the truth our text contains : because these make 
a natural introduction to this great lesson : they make 
us feel its supreme moment ; and they gradually lead us 
up to it. 

If you are ready to set your affection on earthly 
things, then there is a lesson for you in the text, — Do 
not : for 54 the night cometh." And how much we all 
need this lesson : how ready we all are to set our whole 
heart on our worldly interests, and to live as if this life 
were all. A man is ready to feel content and self-satis- 
fied when his earthly affairs are all going on well. A 
man who has got thoroughly into the spirit of some 
earthly pursuit, toils on in it as though he believed 
all would be well with him if he could only reach 
that thing, whatever it is, which is the object of his 
present desires and endeavors. There are several 
things which, in all countries and all ages of the 
world, men have been found to make the objects of 
their especial regard, — a regard so pervading and so 
constant, that we quite understand that it must be the 
state of heart and mind which the Bible describes as 
"setting the affection on things on the earth." Such 
things are wealth, and standing in the world : such a 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



261 



thing is reputation or eminence. And some nave al- 
ways been found who repudiated ambition, and sought 
rather that warmer thing, comfort. Some have sought, 
as the best of earthly ends, a quiet and pleasant home, 
a lowly lot, surrounded and gladdened by the love of 
friends. And w r hile the man who toils for wealth or 
honor oftentimes toils in vain ; or finds what looked so 
inviting at a distance turn to ashes on the lips, like the 
fabled apples of the Dead Sea shore : there is more 
of true and real enjoyment in his heart who takes St. 
Paul's advice and " studies to be quiet " : who seeks to 
go peacefully through this life, far from its din, and 
unvexed by its ambition. But see to it, my friends, 
amid all your earthly blessings and enjoyments, that 
you do not set your whole heart on them ; that you 
lay up your treasure elsewhere. You know how apt 
we are, when interested in a worldly thing, to be su- 
premely interested in it: how ready we are to make 
idols of our blessings : the more need, then, of the admo- 
nition of our text. Ah ! these things only last for life's 
little day ; — and " the night cometh." Even as you 
look round upon all those things you value most, re- 
member that they are fleeting from you. The night 
is coming on just as fast when the noonday light is 
beaming, and the green earth smiles in the sunshine, 
as when, the evening shadows are gathering thick and 
fast. And, in like manner, through all the hours of the 



262 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



day of life, the night of death is drawing nearer and 
nearer. The hour is coming when you must part from 
all earthly objects of affection: and what is to become 
of you in that hour if your whole heart was set on 
these ? You would not tie your whole earthly happi- 
ness to a flower that is to fade at sunset : and is it more 
reasonable for a being that is to live forever, to choose 
for his portion what must pass from his grasp whenever 
the sun of this short life goes down ? O that we 
could feel it, that even now the shadows of all worldly 
things fall eastward, and the night is coming fast ! 
Christ did not say " the night will come " : it is " the 
night cometh " ! Even now, the shadow of parting 
broods over all our intercourse with those we love. 
Even now, the home comforts are passing away from 
the man of simple domestic tastes : the riches from the 
rich man, the fame from the famous man, the power 
from the great man. Look at your pleasant home that 
you love so well : beware of loving it too much : for 
" the night cometh " ! Enjoy the estimation of your 
fellow-men: take the advantages of your well-earned 
wealth : but remember that " the night cometh " ! 
Look on the face of the friend you love best : and 0, 
pray and strive that both of you may reach that happy 
shore where friends are never parted : but make up your 
mind to a parting here : for " the night cometh ! " Over 
the green fields : over the blue hills : over the shining 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



263 



river : over the trees and flowers : over our dear home : 
over all we ever saw, ever knew, ever loved : over them 
all, and over you and me, broods the shadow of ap- 
proaching night : and the hour is coming, even now, 
when you and I must bid them farewell forever ! 

Our second lesson from the text is one of patience. 
If you are ready to repine and to lose heart amid your 
cares and sorrows, then there is a lesson for you in the 
text. Do not : for " the night cometh." And we often 
stand in need of being reminded of something which 
may give us patience to endure and to hope. For we 
are never clear of something which causes us anxiety, 
vexation, or grief. We are always hoping for a time 
when no grief shall vex us, and no care disturb : but 
very seldom, hardly ever, does such a time come. 
Some cause of annoyance is ever springing up when 
least looked for. Nor does it wholly reconcile us to all 
this, to tell us that God sends us a thousand blessings 
for one discomfort, or one great distress : true enough 
that, and it is a ground for thankfulness : but a whole 
cup of fair water by the infusion of a few bitter drops 
becomes a bitter draught : and it is sad to think how 
much good, how many blessings, may be neutralized so 
far as their power of giving happiness is concerned, by 
some little but constant fretting and worrying care. 
And even the true believer knows what he is to look 
for ; for " we must through much tribulation enter into 



264 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



the kingdom of God." In addition to the common ills 
that flesh is heir to, there are the special trials which 
arise out of his character as a new creature in Christ 
Jesus : the conflict with remaining corruption and en- 
snaring temptation : the hearty sorrow for sin : the 
overwhelming doubts as to how he stands with God. 
And it was not, perhaps, saying too much, when one of 
our sweetest poets declared, that even looking back on a 
life with no special crushing crook in it, it would be a 
hideous thing (such was his word) to believe that the 
future should be no better than the past had been. 
And naturally as we cling to this pleasing, anxious 
being, we should many a time feel it a burden too heavy 
to bear, if we had to think that things would go on in 
the self- same way forever : that eternity would be the 
same round of worrying business to look after, of thou- 
sand little cares and vexations and paltry annoyances, 
of wearing and endless engagements, with here and 
there the great deep grief that strikes straight at the 
heart, and that makes us think so lightly of all that had 
sufficed to disquiet us before : I think we should almost 
long for the quiet of annihilation in the prospect of an 
eternity like that. But whenever the Christian wearies 
under the burden of all he has to bear, he thinks : Ah, 
these things last only for life's little day : and dark as 
that day may be (and it will be light to my Saviour's) 
it will drag through at last : for " the night cometh." 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



265 



And sweet as is the evening hour of rest to the laboring 
man, — gently as the twilight falls, and releases him 
from toil, — O what should that be to the eventide that 
descends on the true believer, wherein the Saviour 
" abides with him " : what should that be to look on to, 
compared with the saved soul's rest upon the bosom of 
its God ! I think it an unworthy feeling for a Christian 
man, though I believe it is a common one, to think of 
this night that shall end all the sorrows of the day of 
life, as if finding comfort in thinking of that were the 
last sad resort of utter hopelessness, — something only 
to be turned to when every other crumb of comfort fails. 
It may be sad indeed to make up our mind that this life 
is done for us ; that for us there is no happiness more 
save in turning our back upon everything we know or 
ever knew, and launching away into an untried world : 
there is indeed a bitterness in that, and it may seem to 
some but a last poor comfort when all others fail. But 
it seems to us a reasonable and a Christian thing ; a 
thing commended to us by apostolic authority, and hal- 
lowed by the example of Christ Himself ; — to gain 
strength and patience to bear up under the ills of life by 
the anticipation of the bliss of immortality, — by remem- 
bering that the blackest cloud must soon blow over, and 
a glorious day dawn out of the grave's dark night. O 
if we had the faith really to believe God's sure and pre- 
cious promises, concerning the perfect rest and holiness 
12 



266 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



that remain for Christ's people away in the country we 
look for and journey on to : if we could but feel how 
little a thing time is, and how mighty eternity : if we 
could but realize what trifles they are that yex us here, 
compared with that " exceeding weight of glory " which 
Christ has purchased for His own : O then, what rest 
and soothing there would be to the weighed-down soul 
in the assurance of the text ! Not so pleasantly does the 
evening stillness fall upon the noisy work-day world, as 
that blessed thought would sink upon the tossed and fe- 
vered heart. The whirl would cease ; the fever of soul 
would abate ; the little earthly cares would sink to their 
true insignificance : the soul would feel that it has some- 
thing grander to think of and to care for : the day of life 
may be troubled and dark, but it will come to a close at 
last : for " the night cometh ! " 

Our third lesson from the text is so closely akin to 
that we have been considering, that we need do no more 
than mention it. If you are ready to turn weary of 
your duties, then there is a lesson for you in the text : 
do not ; for " the night cometh." Pleasant as duty hon- 
estly performed may be, still in this world we must 
sometimes toil on when we have little heart or strength 
for it. There may be such a thing as "to drive the 
round of life's wearisome tasks till the jaded body is felt 
as a burden." But "there remaineth a rest for the 
people of God " : and although there will be no idleness 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



267 



in heaven, but constant occupation ; there will be no 
weariness, — no fatigue. And as through the burning 
hours of toil the laboring man looks forward with joy to 
the evening when his work shall end : so the Christian 
pilgrim, called to "bear the burden and heat of the 
day," may find refreshment in the thought that " the 
night cometh." But not lingering on this : 

Our fourth and last lesson from the text is that 
which we at first mentioned as by eminence the lesson 
which our Saviour drew from it. " The night cometh" : 
and day, the time for working, will be ended then : and 
therefore while day lasts we should see to it that we ac- 
complish the great work of life, the working out of our 
salvation ; — that work which must be done before the 
day of life is ended, or it can never be done at all. We 
said that the other lessons we can draw from our text 
lead us up to this one : they all come in to make us feel 
more deeply how important this one is. For in order 
that you may rightly learn these other lessons, you must 
first learn this. Without learning this, you cannot prac- 
tise the others. We asked you, when wearied with duty, 
to comfort yourselves by remembering that " the night 
cometh," and the rest remaineth after life's sun has set : 
but there is no comfort here save to the true believer ; 
to the man who has effectually minded Christ's great 
teaching in the text. We asked you, when overwhelmed 
with great sorrows or stung by small ones, to comfort 



268 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



yourselves by remembering that "the night cometh," 
and that with life's day all life's troubles cease: but 
there is no comfort here save to the true believer ; to 
the man who has effectually minded Christ's great 
teaching in the text. We asked you, when tempted 
to set your heart upon worldly things, to remember that 
" the night cometh," and that these things last only for the 
day which that night will close : and is not the lesson, 
to " set our affection on things above," just Christ's great 
lesson, set out under a different light ? Let me, then, 
ask your serious attention to this thought ; that because 
the night will come, because the day will end, we ought 
at once and earnestly to finish that great work which life 
was given us to do. "One thing is needful": and we 
have all been taught from our childhood what that one 
thing is. It is a saving interest in Christ : it is to have 
repentance and faith : it is to be regenerated and sancti- 
fied by the Holy Spirit. It is in short to undergo that 
change, so well understood in the general by all of us, 
which makes a man a Christian. That is our work in 
this world : we all know quite well that it is : there is 
not one of us here but intends some time to do it, if we 
have not done it already. I believe that if we exclude 
those who avow themselves infidels : and those who are 
so steeped in vice that they never seriously think at all : 
■ — if we just take the common run of men of decent 
conduct, there is not one who does not intend at some 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



269 



future time to set himself to the working out of his sal- 
vation. No man intends to be damned. I do not be- 
lieve there is one soul here that could this day look 
round on this place, and then say, It is my purpose 
that I, who am here, shall at last take up my abode in 
perdition. And we say there is a lesson to all in the 
text : see to it, while it is called to-day, that you seek 
and find a part in Christ. Let it be now, for fear it 
should be never. See to it now, for it is only while the 
day lasts that this great change can be made : " the 
night cometh when no man can work": there is no 
repentance in the grave : death fixes our state for eter- 
nity. See to it now, for we have every reason to com- 
pel us to this great work now: we lose nothing by 
making the change ; we gain everything : it brings the 
heart a peace here, which nothing else can give : it 
makes us the friends and children of the Almighty Dis- 
poser of the universe : it is the only thing that can 
enable us to look on, calmly and cheerfully, to that 
night of death which is so dark and awful to the 
worldly man. See to it now, for we have every en- 
couragement: Christ died to gain this great salvation 
for us : He pleads for us before God : He knocks at the 
door, and invites us to trust ourselves to Him : the 
Spirit is promised to help our infirmities : and God has de- 
clared that He wills not that any should perish, but that 
all should believe and live. See to it now, for it never 



270 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



will be easier : there never will be a time when Satan 
will be ready to resign you, and when your own weak 
heart will have no leaning to the things of time and 
sense : you never can slide into salvation and peace 
without an effort: you will always have to "strive to 
enter the strait gate." See to it now: we have the 
weightiest reason to do it soon. " Now is the day of 
salvation " : now is the time we can do it : when the 
night has once come it will be too late : and remember 
no twilight foretells the coming of this night : it may be 
here in a day or an hour. And here is one great dif- 
ference between the night of which our text speaks and 
that which closes the common day. " The night com- 
eth " now : and if at this moment there be no trace of 
its approach, there will be soon : it will not be long 
before the sun shall slope towards the West, and the 
breeze turn chill, and the light lessen and die away: 
and these hints of night's approach, these heralds of his 
coming, will warn the traveller to quicken his step, and 
the worker to push on faster with his task, if they would 
finish what they have to do before night interrupts them. 
But although life has its evening too : although gray 
hairs, and departing vigor, and enfeebled faculties, may 
mark the decline to its dark night, death : still the day 
of life may be ended in a moment without a warning, 
and the night of death may come like the tiger's spring, 
without a forewarning cloud. The bursting of one little 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



271 



vein : the failure of some little spring in the machinery 
of our wonderfully made frames : the slip of a foot : the 
falling of a stone : that is all that is needed to eclipse 
our sun at noon : to cut our day sharp and short. And 
O, brethren, if this be so, shall one rational being be 
found within these walls, who will allow his life to go on 
and on, knowing that life's great work is yet to do, and 
still not earnestly laboring to do it? It will stand you 
in no stead, in the other world, to say that you always 
intended to repent some time ; and that you verily be- 
lieve you would have done so had you not died. I 
cannot think of any words to make the duty of casting 
yourselves on Jesus now, if you have not already, 
plainer than it is at the very first glance. " The night 
cometh " : it may be here very soon : it may be that be- 
fore you reach your homes this day, your day of grace 
may be suddenly ended : yet that little time is all you 
have to make your peace with God. O what can be 
plainer than that you should make the most of that little 
time ! What plainer than that you should not lose a 
minute of it : what plainer than that if you intend ever 
to become a Christian, it should be now ; even now ! 

Yes, brethren, " the night cometh." It has been com- 
ing on all the time I have been speaking to you. In 
some of us the sun of life may be mounting up, and in 
others declining : but in none of us is it standing still. 
And there is not a point of sharper contrast between the 



272 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



true Christian and the mere worldling, than in the re- 
spective feelings of the two as they think of this great 
and acknowledged fact. It is to the worldly man a 
fact that is all sad and dreary : it is to the Christian 
man a fact that is all glorious and bright, though with 
the sobered brightness of a blessed hope, that is as far 
from romance as it is above it. There is no theme on 
which worldly genius has spoken more beautifully, be- 
cause there is none on which the worldly heart has felt 
more deeply, than the sad contrast between the dull 
realities of life's decline, and the bright hopes of its ris- 
ing : and he spake truly to nature who repudiated the 
notion that any earthly gain connected with the evening 
of life could make up for its morning joyousness : the 
natural feeling is expressed most beautifully in the 
words, — and we well believe their author meant what 
he said, — 

" Ne'er tell me of glories serenely adorning 

The close of our day, the calm eve of our night : — 
Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness of morning, — 
Its smiles and its tears are worth evening's best light! " 

Yes, to the man whose whole view is confined to this 
world, it is an awful truth that the text declares. It is 
a very sad thing for a man to look round him on his 
pleasant home, amid its beautiful trees and its kindly 
neighbors, and with its warm comforts ; and then to 
think " the night is coming that shall part me from all 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



273 



these : and when I am parted from them I have nothing 
else to look for : beyond the grave I have no hope and 
no home." — And even if a man has very little of this 
world's goods : even if he is very poor and very wretch- 
ed : still if he be not a Christian, it is an awful thought 
that " the night cometh 99 : for we naturally cling to bare 
life ; and bad as life may be, death to the natural man is 
something infinitely worse. It is only to the true be- 
liever that there is any comfort in our text. It is only 
he who can feel no cloud cast upon life's little day by 
the thought that " the night cometh." It is only he who 
can calmly anticipate that night as it comes on ; know- 
ing that though it may end a happy day here, it shall 
usher in a far happier and brighter. When the believer 
remembers this text ; when he looks onward to the night 
it tells of ; he sees an eternal day beyond it. His view 
does not stop upon the grave : it takes in a happy country 
upon the farther side. When the man who is not a 
Christian reads the text it means to him no more than 
it actually says : it means just that night is coming : night 
with all its terrors : night, dark, dismal, eternal : night 
that knows no morning. But when the Christian reads 
my text, it means more to him than meets the eye : it 
means that night indeed is coming, but after night a bliss- 
ful and eternal day : the night our Saviour speaks of is 
a moment's interval of dark, that parts the cloudy day 
of mortal life from the bright and glorious day of an 

12* R 



274 



THE COMING NIGHT. 



eternal world ! The believer's day goes down, only like 
the sun, which even as it sinks beneath our horizon and 
from our sight, is rising in glory upon bright and distant 
lands. When the Christian's friends stand round his 
dying-bed, and say his sun is setting fast, it is at that 
very moment dawning in brightness upon the sinless and 
sorrowless world. His day sets here, and in that hour 
it rises there : his spark of life is extinguished here, and 
there in that moment it is rekindled a thousand times as 
brightly : time ends for him here, but only that eternity 
may begin there : he is no longer the poor sinful dying 
man upon earth, but he is the pure and happy immortal 
in heaven ! What wonder then, if he should listen calm- 
ly to the declaration that " the night cometh ! " It is but 
the line of shadow across which he steps into the sun- 
shine ! It is but the threshold over which he passes into 
his own dear home ! Yes, " the night cometh " ; and 
also the Eternal Day. 



XVI. 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 

"But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine." — 
Titus ii. i. 

ND what were these things ? 

The following verses tell us. "That the 
aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in 
faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women like- 
wise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not 
false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good 
things : That they may teach the young women to be 
sober, to love their husbands, to love their children ; To 
be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to 
their own husbands, that the word of God be not blas- 
phemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober-mind- 
ed." These are the things which St. Paul described, as 
" the things which become sound doctrine " : that is to 
say, a faithful discharge of all duty is what " becomes 
sound doctrine." So the general principle which we 
draw from the words of our text, regarded in connection 
with the verses which follow, is, that it is fitting that a 
good life should go with a sound creed : that virtue 




276 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



should accompany faith, and practice grow out of belief. 
Doing must arise out of knowing. Faith must manifest 
itself in good works. Pure morality must succeed to 
Christian faith. A holy, sober, just, and devout life is 
" the thing which becomes sound doctrine." 

Now the better to understand St. Paul's meaning in 
the words of our text, let us think of the circumstances 
in which they were written. Paul, it appears, had been 
in the island of Crete, and had done something towards 
laying the foundations of a Christian Church there. For 
some reason which is not recorded, the Apostle had to 
leave Crete before he had got things arranged as he 
could have wished. He therefore left Titus behind 
him, " to set in order the things which were wanting, 
and to ordain elders in every city." Perhaps St. Paul 
had been compelled to part from Titus hurriedly, with- 
out having had time to give him all the instructions he 
desired : perhaps the Apostle wished to furnish Titus 
with some more permanent directory, to which he might 
refer from time to time, as the occasion arose : but how- 
ever that might be, St. Paul wrote from Nicopolis this 
Epistle, intended for the guidance of Titus in the im- 
portant work of fully organizing the Church of Crete. 
And the great Apostle gives the youthful Evangelist 
no smooth or flattering account of the character of the 
people committed to his charge. St. Paul, as we all 
know, was the last man in the world to care for giving 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



277 



offence when the truth was to be spoken : and we have 
no more striking proof of this than in the way in which 
in this Epistle he describes the general character of the 
Cretians. Lying, cruelty, and brutal manners, gluttony 
and sensuality, are the things which he mentions as 
characteristic of this people : and there is a sharp re- 
buke to the mealy-mouthed preachers of modern days 
in the entire spirit of those instructions he gives Titus 
for dealing with such. St. Paul wanted plain speaking : 
there was to be no going round about for fear that peo- 
ple would not like it. Of course they would not like it : 
but notwithstanding that, Titus was to " rebuke them 
sharply, that they might be sound in the faith " : he was 
to " speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority " ; 
and to " let no man despise him." Now probably you 
are all aware, that in almost every age of the Christian 
Church there have been men so foolish or so wicked as 
to teach that if men have faith they may do without 
works : they have taught that if any person has thor- 
oughly and heartily believed in Christ, it does not mat- 
ter in how many sins he may indulge ; inasmuch as our 
works have nothing to do with our acceptance with God. 
It is indeed quite true that no human being can be justi- 
fied before God upon the ground of his own merits : " by 
the works of the law can no man be justified " : and it 
is simply and solely for the sake of Christ that any 
man can obtain pardon, or peace, or heaven. But there 



278 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



never was a wickeder lie told by the father of lies him- 
self, than that those who have believed in Christ are 
set free from obedience to the moral law as a rule of 
life. jSow remember what kind of people were the in- 
habitants of Crete. They were a gross, sensual, lazy, 
lying race : they were just the very men to grasp at 
the idea that Christianity was a religion that would save 
them from hell, and get them admittance to heaven at 
last ; while yet it would allow them to enjoy the pleas- 
ures of sin in this world. They were just the very 
men to stand up for faith without works, — " to turn 
the grace of God into lasciviousness," — to resort to 
that foul, wicked, idiotic heresy, that drew tears from 
the eyes of Paul himself, and made him declare, even 
weeping, that such as taught it were " the enemies of 
the cross of Christ." And so Paul, knowing what kind 
of people the Cretians were, bids Titus adapt his in- 
structions to their case ; and tell them plainly and 
oftentimes that doctrine and practice must go together. 
Therefore it was that the Apostle so earnestly declared 
that pure and strict morality, — the faithful discharge 
by all sorts and conditions of men of their personal 
duties and their social, — were " the things that be- 
come sound doctrine." And in reading over this Epis- 
tle you cannot fail of being struck by the earnestness 
and frequency with which Paul presses on Titus the 
same idea. " This is a faithful saying," he says (chap. 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



279 



iii. 8), " and these things I will that thou affirm con- 
stantly; that they which have believed in God might 
be careful to maintain good works." Then (v. 14), he 
says, " And let our's also learn to maintain good works 
for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful." And 
in the preceding chapter, the Apostle exhorts servants 
to fidelity, and honesty, and obedience, that thus " they 
may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all 
things." Still more fully does he set out the connection 
between faith and morality in the verses which follow 
(chap. ii. 11, 12) : " For the grace of God that bringeth 
salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, 
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live 
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." 
And so complete, indeed, is the statement of all our 
duties which is contained in this last passage, that it 
is generally taken as the basis of the classification of 
human duty which is set out in systems of Ethics : the 
" soberly " including all the duties we owe to ourselves ; 
the " righteously," all we owe to our fellow-men ; and 
the "godly," all we owe to the Almighty. And thus 
it is, my brethren, that St. Paul would have us under- 
stand, and that in the plainest and clearest way, that 
for men and women, old and young, servants and mas- 
ters, all kinds of men in all kinds of circumstances, 
faithfully and constantly to seek to avoid every sin 
and perform every duty, is what becomes, — he does 



280 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



not say sound morality, — he does not say sound views 
and principles in Ethics, — he does not say sound no- 
tions of the fitness of things and the fundamental laws 
of reason and virtue : but he does say that all this is 
"the thing which becomes sound doctrine" 

Thus boldly and resolutely does St. Paul assert the 
vital and inseparable connection between Christian faith 
and Christian virtue : between evangelical doctrine and 
pure morality. And I doubt not that many of you 
know that there have been men, and that at no distant 
day in our own country, who have been bold enough to 
maintain that St. Paul was wrong and mistaken when 
he did this. There have been and there are men who 
maintain that the doctrine of Justification by Faith is 
subversive of morality, and " adverse to the interests of 
virtue and practical righteousness in the world." There 
have been and there are men who maintain that if you 
go to a man, and tell him that no doings nor sufferings 
of his own can ever save him from hell or gain him ad- 
mission to heaven, but that it is by faith in Christ, and 
that alone, he is justified before God ; this is the way to 
make that man feel that he is set loose from every re- 
quirement of morality ; and to make him think that 
since his own doings have nothing to do with his accept- 
ance with the Almighty, he may do just what he pleases. 
What is the use of my doing anything, the man may 
say, since all my doings count for nothing ? Why should 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



281 



I deny myself in any way, or labor to perform any disa- 
greeable and painful duty, when I have only to believe 
in Christ, and then I shall be placed on just as good a 
footing as if I had practised labor and self-denial to the 
most harassing degree ? And I will grant you that there 
have been men, — how hopelessly ignorant of the very 
alphabet of Christian knowledge and experience, — how 
recklessly wicked, — how idiotically senseless and foolish 
I forbear to say, — who have actually gone upon these 
principles : who have pretended that they knew that 
some process had taken place within their souls, — 
where of course no one could see whether it had or had 
not, — which they considered was that " believing in 
Christ " to which salvation is promised : who therefore 
pretended that they knew their salvation was secured : 
and who, " by gross departures from some of the most 
obvious and incumbent moralities of life," have proved a 
stumbling-block and an offence to multitudes. Ah ! but 
these are the very men against whom Paul directs his 
sternest and most deeply-felt rebukes : these are the 
men who " turn the grace of God into licentiousness," 
and u who rank among the privileges of the Gospel an 
immunity for sin." These are the very men of whom 
Paul declared " often, and even weeping, that they were 
the enemies of the cross of Christ " ; and its very worst 
enemies. They are Satan's own choicest emissaries, 
veiling themselves under the name of Christ. Chris- 



282 



DOCTRDsE AND PRACTICE. 



tians, do they call themselves ! Christianity repudiates 
them and flings them off : she knows them not, and dis- 
avows all connection with them. They talk of sound 
doctrine ! They don't know w T hat it means ! Give us 
the Gospel's open enemies and we can brave them : but 
save us from the foul dishonor done to the name of 
Jesus by the moral worthlessness of those who thus 
falsely profess themselves the Gospel's friends ! Fix it 
in your minds, my brethren, — you cannot do it too 
firmly, — that St. Paul, the stoutest and firmest advo- 
cate of the great evangelic doctrine of justification by 
faith, is at the same time the strongest exponent of the 
moral requirements of the religion of Christ. The self- 
same hand that wrote, " Therefore we conclude that a 
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law " ; 
wrote also at the close of a sad list of moral transgres- 
sions, that " they which do such things shall not inherit 
the kingdom of God " ; and wrote that u they which are 
Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and 
lusts " : and wrote that " the grace of God that bringeth 
salvation, teacheth us, that, denying ungodliness and 
worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and 
godly in this present world." jSor did Paul maintain 
these two doctrines, that of justification by faith, and 
that of the necessity of a pure life, as things which were 
both true, but not easily reconcilable with one another. 
He did not first set out in his Epistle to the Romans the 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



283 



first great doctrine, of salvation simply through Christ : 
and then, finding it pushed into consequences legiti- 
mately flowing from it, which yet he shrunk from, try in 
writing to Titus to hedge in that doctrine, to make de- 
ductions from it, and reservations upon it, so as to bring 
it into something like consistence with common con- 
science and common sense. No such thing. There is 
no eating in one doctrine, to give due prominence to the 
other. He puts the two side by side : he set them out 
as perfectly consistent and conformable with one an- 
other : he does all this with an unaffected simplicity 
which proves he thought that no one who was not either 
desperately wicked or desperately foolish could ever 
fancy them anything else : He makes the one indeed 
grow out of the other : and when he would prescribe 
and enforce moral duties, see how he speaks of them to 
Titus : " Speak thou," he says, " the things which be- 
come sound doctrine ! " 

But we have much more to say than this. Not only 
do we declare, taking St. Paul for our present authority, 
that it is not true that the doctrine of justification by 
faith is subversive of morality : we say, on the contrary, 
that the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel received into 
the heart in their saving power are not the best but the 
only guarantees and sources of all morality. It may at 
the first glance appear somewhat inconsistent, — but the 



284 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



question is one of fact, and to the test of fact we are con- 
tent to bring it, — when we say that to go to a man 
seeking earnestly for salvation, and to tell him that his 
own best doings have no merit whatever, but that he 
must rely simply and solely for forgiveness on the aton- 
ing blood of Christ, and seek for the influences of the 
Holy Spirit to originate and carry out every good feel- 
ing and good action : — when we say that to tell a man 
that, and make him feel it, — is the way to make him 
seek to avoid sin and to practise all that is pure and right 
in a way that nothing in this world would ever have 
made him do while he was depending on his own works 
as a ground of merit, or whilst he was urged to the prac- 
tice of morality just for morality's sake. It may seem 
strange to those to whom it is simply announced as a 
theory ; but it is no less true ; that that evangelical sys- 
tem which seems to undervalue morality, — which makes 
nothing of it indeed as a ground of merit, though it 
makes everything of it in another way shortly to be 
spoken of, — is the system which above all others has 
proved in fact successful in producing the best and no- 
blest specimens of morality; — of all that is amiable, 
honest, pure, lovely, and heroic. If you wish to find the 
man who is most conscientiously, constantly, and success- 
fully laboring to allow himself in no sin, and to leave 
undone no duty, you should look to the humble and con- 
trite soul who feels and confesses that in him there is 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



285 



no sufficiency and no merit ; and who acknowledges sim- 
ply and from his heart that Christ is all in all, — the 
single foundation of his trust and hope. Now my friends, 
this is a question of fact ; it is a question to be decided 
by appeal to fact. And I ask those among you who 
have learned by experience what it is fairly to get off 
the ground of your own merit, and with some sense of 
the freeness of the Gospel salvation to cast your souls 
upon Christ ; whether you cannot testify that sin never 
appeared to you a thing to be so hated and shunned, as 
when you thought of it as all parted from you forever 
by the Saviour's precious blood : whether you could even 
admit to your mind for one moment the idea, that you 
might go on in sin because you felt or hoped that your 
sins would never condemn you now. And do you not 
know that those around you in whose case you have 
most reason to think there is the spirit of true Christian- 
ity, are precisely the men most distinguished for all that 
is just, amiable, moral, in the affairs of daily life ? And 
does not even the most worldly man feel a thrill of dis- 
gust, and almost of horror, when he finds the man who 
goes to a communion-table, and there professes himself 
Christ's, acting either unsoberly, unrighteously, or ungod- 
ly ? Look to St. Paul himself. How assured was his faith 
in Christ ! What says he ? "I know in Whom I have 
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that 
which I have committed to Him against that day " : and 



286 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



how did this man live ? "I therefore so run, not as un- 
certainly : so fight I, not as one that beateth the air : but 
I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest 
by any means, when I have preached to others, I my- 
self should be a castaway." And I may remind you, 
too, of the memorable confession of one who was among 
the most illustrious of divines, that for many years he 
urged upon his people the importance of morality, as 
the ultimate end of his preaching ; and in all that time 
his preaching produced not the slightest improvement 
upon the moral habits of his parishioners : but at length 
he learned to set before them, and to urge upon their 
acceptance, the free offer of forgiveness through the 
blood of Christ : and then it was that a higher moral 
tone spread through the parish : then it was that scrupu- 
lous fidelity and honesty took the place of unfaithfulness 
and fraud : and that great and good man carried with 
him to all his after-life the conviction, taught him by his 
own experience, that " to preach Christ is the only effec- 
tive way of preaching morality in all its branches 99 ; that 
the doctrines of the Gospel, received into the heart, are 
the only sure spring of all morality. 

We have said, my friends, that the question is one of 
fact ; and facts without number confirm St. Paul's asser- 
tion. But do not imagine that we shrink in the least 
degree from bringing the matter to the test of reasom 
Do not imagine that we think that the best of the argu- 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



287 



ment lies with those who say that the doctrine of justifi- 
cation by faith is inconsistent with morality. You ob- 
serve that in our text Paul speaks of all sorts of people 
being careful in their respective stations to perform their 
duty, — Paul speaks of these things as " the things which 
become sound doctrine." Now if these words be rightly 
applied, there must be something in sound doctrine fitted 
when rightly regarded to conduce to morality. And it 
is easily to be proved that the fact is so. I have not 
stayed to tell you what Paul meant by " sound doc 
trine " : I take it for granted that you all know : the 
Apostle just meant the grand characteristic doctrines of 
the Gospel : and we now say that in every view these 
are eminently fitted to promote a pure morality. Does 
not the Gospel teach us that we should hate and avoid 
sin ? — Does not the Gospel teach us that sin was the 
cause of unutterable anguish and agony to our gracious 
Eedeemer ; and that every sin is a crucifying of Christ 
afresh ? Is it not a ready lesson from this doctrine that 
we should hate and shun sin ? Does not the Gospel tell 
us that the great work of the Holy Spirit upon our 
hearts is to regenerate and sanctify ; and that " this is 
the will of God, even our sanctification " : and if there be 
meaning in words or actions, does not all this mean that 
day by day we ought to be growing more free from sin ? 
Does not the Gospel reveal to us a holy and happy 
heaven, as the end of our hopes and strivings ; and tell 



288 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



us that " without holiness no man shall see God " there : 
that " the pure in heart shall see God " : and that " there 
shall in no wise enter there anything that defileth, nei- 
ther whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie ? " 
But one feels it is almost a wasting of time to set one's 
self to prove that the Gospel from first to last sets its 
face against all sin. We have just indicated a little of 
that " sound doctrine 99 which virtue " becomes 99 : and I 
think no one can fail to see how naturally the two things, 
faith and practice, go together: how these doctrines 
which we have mentioned, and many others, lead direct- 
ly to a pure and holy life. 

We said a little while ago, that although in one way 
the Gospel makes nothing of what are commonly called 
"good works," it makes a very great deal of them in 
another way. u Sound doctrine 99 tells us that good 
works can do nothing to save us : that as a ground of 
merit they are absolutely worthless : that we are saved 
through Christ alone. We are justified by faith, not by 
works : but then, " sound doctrine " tells us that wher- 
ever there is true faith, there will be works also : that 
faith manifests itself in works, and that works are the 
evidence of faith. Justification is a thing which is in- 
visible to us : it is something done in heaven : and it is 
not possible for us to turn over the leaves of the Book 
of Life, and ascertain there whether the name of this 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



289 



man or that man be written there or no. But still, we 
have means of judging, in some degree, whether we our- 
selves or others be justified : because justification, itself 
unseen, does (so to speak) cast a visible shadow : when- 
ever justification exists in heaven, sanctification walks 
visible upon earth. Wherever faith is in the heart, 
though we cannot see itself, we can see what springs 
from it : it will manifest itself in a pure and holy life, as 
certainly as good seed in the ground will evidence its 
presence there by springing up into leaves and fruit. 
" Faith without works is dead " ; is the strong declara- 
tion of the Apostle James : That faith which lies dor- 
mant in the heart and never affects the life, is no faith 
at all. St. John puts this with equal clearness, making 
works the evidence of faith : " And hereby we do know 
that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." 
" Whoso keepeth His word, in him is the love of God 
perfected : hereby know we that we are in Him." Then 
St. Peter writes, " And besides this, giving all diligence, 
add to your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, knowledge ; and 
to knowledge, temperance ; and to temperance, patience ; 
and to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly 
kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if 
these things be in you, and abound, they make you that 
ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowl- 
edge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh 
these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath 
13 s 



290 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Where- 
fore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your 
calling and election sure : for if ye do these things, ye 
shall never fail." You will remember St. Paul's state- 
ment to the Galatians, " In Christ Jesus neither circum- 
cision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision ; but faith 
which worheth by love" And we have no stronger dec- 
laration of the essential necessity of works of morality 
as the evidence of a living faith, than that of St. James: 
" For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith 
without works is dead also." Never forget, my breth- 
ren, that by yourselves you can do no good thing : your 
best doings have in them a character of evil : and it is 
only in virtue of a saving union with Christ, and by the 
motion of the Holy Spirit on our hearts, that we can 
perform any duty, or do anything that is pleasing in the 
sight of God. But fix it in your minds, — you cannot 
do so too deeply, — that wherever there is faith in the 
heart, there will be morality in the life : that to any view 
save that of God, Who alone " looketh upon the heart," 
the single proof that can be of the existence of faith, is 
a life conformed to the strict requirements of a morality 
that far exceeds and transcends the very purest that 
human philosophers ever conceived of, or human law- 
givers ever thought to enforce. If any man in his 
daily life allows himself deliberately in the practice 
of any known sin, or in the neglect of any commanded 
duty: if a man in his daily life violate any of the re- 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



291 



quirements of morality : I don't care a straw how plausi- 
bly that man may talk about his faith and his Christian 
experience : I don't care a straw what professions he 
may make of having believed in Christ, and felt in his 
heart the great, saving change : He has no faith : He 
has no part in Christ : He is no believer : and the more 
plausible and the more loud his talk of these things may 
be, the more plainly should I say of him, what I the 
more firmly should believe of him, that he is a vile 
hypocrite and his profession a vile lie ! Ah, he may 
be regular in his appearance at the house of God : he 
may be constant in his attendance at the communion : 
he may make long prayers and loud ones : he may inter- 
lard his conversation with texts of Scripture : he may 
turn up his eyes, and drawl out his words, and speak 
compassionately of others who have (as he fancies) less 
light than he : but he has never believed, — for faith 
purifies the heart, and works by love, and overcomes 
the world : he has never seen the evil of sin, as that 
which nailed the Saviour to the Cross, — for O how 
abominable sin looks to those who look at it as that 
which shed the blood and drew the tears of Jesus : he 
has never repented, — for true repentance is repented 
of no more : he has never practised, — and faith without 
works is dead ; a sham and a delusion. If there be a 
clear full spring, that wells forth upon the mountain's 
side, think you it will keep its waters within itself ; or 
will it not rather send them forth through field and 



292 



DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE. 



wood, a refreshment and a blessing to all things near ? 
And such a spring is living faith : it cannot be confined 
within the heart : it will go forth in a thousand ways : 
in kind looks, in gentle words, in benevolent deeds, in 
charity, in patience, in strict honesty, in perfect truthful- 
ness : in whatsoever things are pure, honest, lovely, and 
of good report. If there be a noble tree, that has stood 
for centuries, yet which has the life in its heart as sound 
as ever,, — will it, when the spring days come back, re- 
main all stern and still : or will it not rather send forth 
millions of leaves, each a green living witness that there 
is life in the old tree yet ? And such a stem is living 
faith : so certainly will it put forth leaves and fruit : so 
certainly will true repentance " bring forth fruits meet 
for repentance " : so certainly will true faith " go forth 
and bear fruit," — fruit " which shall remain." And if 
it be true that the evil and inconsistent behavior of pro- 
fessing Christians has oftentimes been a stumbling-block 
in the way of men ; no less true is it that every faithful 
consistent believer, whose daily life is colored by his 
faith and consistent with it, is something to recommend 
his religion to all who see him. What but this did our 
Saviour mean, when He said, " Let your light so shine 
before men, that they may see your good works, and 
glorify your Father which is in heaven ? " And when 
the Christian seeks to obey this command, what has he 
to do but to exhibit in his daily life " the things which 
become sound doctrine ! " 



XVII. 



PATIENCE. 

"Ye have need of patience." — Heb. x. 36. 

HEY had " need of patience," thought St. Paul, 
those Hebrews to whom he was writing. So 
have we all. It seems from the position in 
which we find the words, that the particular kind of pa- 
tience of which the Hebrews stood in need, was the pa- 
tience which calmly waits for the coming of some ex- 
pected good, rather than the patience which quietly bears 
up under the pressure of some present pain. " Ye have 
need of patience, that after ye have done the will of 
God, ye might receive the promise." Work manfully 
meanwhile, it is as if the Apostle said : and as for the 
reward of your labor, you must wait for that. You will 
not have to wait very long, after all : " Yet a little while, 
and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." 
But human beings are very apt, not only to murmur and 
repine when evil and sorrow are present with them, but 
to grow restless and fretful when they are waiting for 
good, which is safe to come at last, but which they think 




294 



PATIENCE. 



is long in coming. And so, says St. Paul, kindly and 
considerately as it was his way to speak, — and so " Ye 
have need of patience." 

So have we all. Many times, many ways, in many 
cases, we have needed patience, and we shall need it 
again. It is not, perhaps, a very cheering or encourag- 
ing view of life which such a text sets before us ; but it 
is not the less for that a view that is just and right. It 
may seem that it would sound somewhat stern and se- 
vere, were we in such a strain to address some gay be- 
ing, flushed with the hopes of youth, and full of joyous 
anticipation ; and if, reckoning up to such a one the 
things that he or she would want to pass through human 
life peacefully, creditably, and Christianly, we were to 
place in the foreground a quality so little stirring and 
engaging as that sober, staid, grave and almost gloomy 
one, which is mentioned in the text. You will want hon- 
esty and industry, we might say without discouraging 
effect to some youth who has to make his way in the 
world : you will be the better for talent if it has pleased 
God to give it to you : you will need friends and kindly 
sympathy, all these and more : and such a story of the 
wants of future life might be listened to with the high- 
beating heart we should little wish to check or chill. 
You will need, most of all, Christian principle to keep 
you right, Christ's blood to wash your sins away, a Bless- 
ed Spirit to renew your nature, a Christian hope to sus- 



PATIENCE. 



295 



tain you when you come to die. But tell me, you who 
have learned by experience what like thing is life : you 
who have learned it by that experience which does not 
take many years to come, — if there be not something, 
less pleasant to think of, less stirring to name, which will 
be needful at many a time, and in many a place ; and if 
it would not be something less than duty, were we to 
omit to say to any one, to whom we were summing up 
the needs and exigencies of life, just what Paul said to 
the Hebrews long ago : — " Ye have need of patience." 

We have said, my friends, that it is no encouraging 
description of the life which lies before us all, that is im- 
plied in such a text as this. For " patience supposes 
pain : patience is the condition of mind and heart with 
which a Christian desires to submit to evil from which it 
is impossible to escape. And to say that we shall need 
patience, is the same thing as to say that we shall have 
much suffering to endure, much weary waiting for ex- 
pected good, much of the sickness of heart which comes 
from hope deferred, much of that listless sorrow which 
comes from hopes disappointed and blighted. It is not 
an encouraging thing, to set out before one entering upon 
the journey of life, a picture of the fatigues and perils 
which must be encountered by the way. It is not an 
encouraging thing, when a man is just embarking on 
board the ship which is to bear him a weary voyage over 
the ocean, to point out to him the long ranks of buckets 



296 



PATIENCE. 



for extinguishing fire, or the boats for conveying crew 
and passengers after the ship is wrecked, — and to say to 
him, You are very likely to need all these. They may, 
indeed, never be needed : no fire may ever break out ; 
no storm may ever rise ; no leak ever let in destruction ; 
and at the conclusion of the safe and pleasant voyage, 
the traveller may be able to smile at all his needless 
fears. But it is not quite so with that unprepossessing 
provision which St. Paul suggests to us as one which will 
be needed ere the voyage of life is done. It is not a 
chance, and an uncertainty, whether we shall need Pa- 
tience or no. Every one of us must and will. True it 
is, that the lot of some has hardly a crook in it : true it 
is, that some human beings, at some periods of their fife, 
seem to be so highly favored, that little stock and store 
of patience would suffice for them: but the end is not 
yet : call no man happy before he dies : who shall say 
how soon the day may come, when the brightest lot may 
grow the gloomiest, and the heart which hardly ever 
knew care or sorrow, may have more than its own bur- 
den to bear ! Sooner or later, we shall all have need of 
patience : may God please to grant it to us when the 
need shall come ! It is hard indeed to get, like many 
needful things : many have but small measure of it ; 
and those who have most, have little enough. And how 
often we see, that those are most impatient who have 
least to bear, and that many a poor sufferer, upon whom 



PATIENCE. 



297 



God in his mysterious decree has sent suffering which 
seems almost intolerable, is enabled to remain resigned 
and even cheerful under it all ! But we repeat, that St. 
Paul's words, related in the text, may very fitly be re- 
garded as spoken to us all. Many things will come the 
w T ay of us all, which will tend to make us fretful and im- 
patient. And let us think, for a little, of some of the 
most common of these inevitable things : some of those 
circumstances and events which are certain to happen to 
us all, in greater or less degree, and when pressed by 
which we shall have u need of patience." 

The first and most obvious thing which occurs to our 
minds, when we try to call up those things which will 
make patience needful, is positive suffering and pain. 
Patience, in that sense in which it is most easily under- 
stood by most men, supposes pain. It means quiet and 
uncomplaining endurance of that which is painful : and 
indeed, if we were anxious to be philosophically accu- 
rate in language, it w r ouid not be difficult to show that 
patience never means anything else ; and that all the 
circumstances in man's lot which make patience need- 
ful, do so because they imply suffering or uneasiness to 
be submitted to. But passing by such a thought as that, 
how much of positive pain, both of body and mind, falls 
to the lot of almost every human being : and how hard 
it is, yea but for God's grace how impossible it is, to re- 
frain from impatience, from murmuring, from bitter 
13* 



298 



PATIENCE. 



repining and accusing of Providence, when great trou- 
ble conies ! Who bat those who have actually felt the 
heavy load of severe bodily pain, repeated and pro- 
tracted day by day, know the bitter and angry and im- 
patient thoughts and feelings which it has power- to 
stir up in our hearts ? You have heard of the patience 
of Job : his name has passed into a world's proverb for 
his patience : yet how bitterly he complained in his time 
of grief : and how sadly true a representation of the 
natural tendency of the fallen human heart under over- 
whelming suffering, is that wicked suggestion which he 
so steadfastly resisted, that " curse God and die ! " It is 
not likely, perhaps, that any one here will ever be 
tempted and tried as Job was : although indeed it is a 
strange and a mysterious thing, how some human beings 
are as it were singled out for terrible suffering: how some 
are doomed to lie for years on beds of agony, — how some 
are selected as the victims of unendurable wrong: and 
who can tell but that he or she may yet attain this 
sorrowful eminence, — may yet receive the shock of 
some fearful accident, or become the prey of some 
dreadful disease, or the victim of some crushing mis- 
fortune ? Which of us here can tell how sadly we may 
need patience before we come to die ! But suffering, 
whether great or small, always tends to make us impa- 
tient: and oftentimes those little, insect cares and pains 
which are of daily and hourly occurrence, and which 



PATIENCE. 



299 



seem, perhaps, too small and insignificant to need any 
great exercise of patience to enable us to face them, yet 
suffice to spur us on to an impatience and fretfulness 
which are sinful and humiliating. The little trials of 
temper which we must meet day by day in domestic and 
social life ; the seasons of occasional bodily suffering 
which we must all experience while placed in these frail 
and sensitive frames which in a thousand ways may 
admit pain ; the little crosses and stings which are for- 
gotten almost as soon as felt ; all these sometimes are able 
to irritate and vex us into a frame of mind which makes 
patience wellnigh as needful as even those greater and 
weightier bereavements and sorrows which tend so sorely 
to stir up a rebellious spirit, — a spirit which chafes at 
and quarrels with the wise though mysterious decrees 
of God. And the very fact, to which experience testi- 
fies, that we are even more ready to grow impatient and 
fretful at little troubles than at great ones, because for 
great troubles a Christian man gathers up his endurance, 
and seeks to receive them submissively as coming by the 
appointment of God, while little ones he somehow does 
not think of in connection with the Almighty, and meets 
them in his own unaided strength, — I say this very fact 
only shows us the more strongly, that a very ordinary 
lot, with very ordinary trials, may yet furnish a great 
field for the exercise of patience ; — patience not the 
heathen virtue, not the worldly prudence, but the Chris- 



300 



PATIENCE. 



tian grace. Do not fancy, my friends, that patience is a 
grace which sorely-tied Job perhaps might exercise, but 
which is not for such as you. Do not fancy, that pa- 
tience is a grace to be prayed for and to be sought after 
by those only who are distinguished above common hu- 
man nature, by bearing more than its common heritage 
of woe. Do not fancy, that because your health is firm, 
and your spirits buoyant, and your temper hopeful, and 
your lot prosperous, and your home happy, and your 
mind easy, that therefore a very moderate share of 
patience will be quite sufficient. Nay, my brother : 
for if you have flesh that can quiver, nerves that can 
jar, a heart that can sink, dear ones that may be 
smitten : if little cares can annoy you, little disap- 
pointments irritate you ; if you have the quick eye to 
which a hair's-breadth of deviation from right is wrong, 
the quick perception to which dulness and stupidity are 
as a sin : if you are, in brief, a cultivated man, and 
keenly and delicately sensitive, because of that cultiva- 
tion, to every impression from within and from without ; 
— then, my brother, let your path in life be what it may, 
as you traverse it, from hour to hour, you will u have 
need of patience ! " 

A second case in which patience will be very needful 
to us all, is when our hopes and wishes are deferred : 
when we have to wait and wait, day after day, week 



PATIENCE. 



301 



after week, year after year, for some expected good. 
And how many human beings have to wait away, in 
this fashion, the best years of life ! How many a human 
being never gets the thing which he or she has waited 
for, till the power of enjoying it is gone ! " It is good 
for a man," says Scripture, " that he both hope and 
quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord " : and we can 
easily think of various benefits which result from a state 
of expectation. But surely patience, implanted by 
God's Spirit, is mightily needed in such a case. For, 
if it be not given, how often it proves bitterly bad for 
man or for woman to linger out these days of expect- 
ancy : how often to do so sours the heart, withers up 
the affections, jaundices the views, turns the fresh hope- 
ful being of youth, into the gloomy, bitter, solitary, 
despairing misanthrope of scarcely middle age ! " Hope 
deferred," said the wisest man, " maketh the heart 
sick " : and the universal heart of humanity feels that 
therein he spake true. There are few conditions of 
mind which are more painful, more enervating, than 
that in which day after day our hopes are put off, even 
though they are not finally blighted. Hanging on, in 
that condition of listless weariness, varied only by eager 
expectation and anxiety alternating with dull disap- 
pointment, the man feels that he can settle to nothing : 
he cannot apply his mind to his task : it would almost 
be a relief to know that the worst he fears has hap- 



302 



PATIENCE. 



pened, so this wretched uncertainty were ended. Ah, 
the mother has " need of patience," who, day after day 
as the post hour draws near, trembles between hope and 
fear for the letter she looks for from her son, laid on the 
bed of sickness in a foreign land : and never does she 
need patience more, than when the message of many 
past days is repeated, that there is no word for her ; and 
she must just wait on, sick at heart, through another 
weary day, again to hope and again to be disappointed 
to-morrow ! It is sad to think how many weary hearts 
there are every day over the world, to whom patience is 
thus needful. I never did believe, that what philoso- 
phers call the light of nature, can prove the goodness of 
God : I believe that so far as there is any such light, it 
points in just the contrary direction ; and never more 
explicitly than in the fact we all know, that things in 
this world not once in ten times turn out as human 
beings wish and hope ; and that every man so much 
needs that patience which will bear up, through day 
after day, against hopes deferred, and at last utterly dis- 
appointed. Do we not all know, that if any human 
being has set his heart on any one thing beneath the 
sun, it is all but a certainty that he never will reach it ; 
it will fall to the lot of some one who did not care for 
it, and did not want it ? Do we not all know, that from 
the smallest matters to the greatest, the same strange 
perversity seems ingrained into the veiy essence of the 



PATIENCE. 



303 



nature of things, rendering patience a needful thing at 
almost every hour of almost every day ? Who does not 
know, that in this evil world things almost invariably 
turn out just in that way which we least wished and 
hoped ? That day is nine times out of ten a rainy one 
which we especially desired should be fair : any little 
accident is pretty safe to happen just at the most incon- 
venient time : any little illness is almost certain to come 
when we most wished to be well. It is just on the clay 
when you expect an important letter that something 
goes wrong with the mail train : it is just when the 
physician is wanted in a case of life and death that of 
course he is twenty miles away. Now all these, and a 
host of such things which each of you will think of for 
himself, may seem very small things. And so they are : 
but very small things may excite a most unchristian de- 
gree of impatience and fretfulness : and the deferred and 
disappointed hopes which may seem quite insignificant 
to strangers, may yet be very important indeed to a man 
himself. What does the world care, whether such a one 
reaches the position on which he has set his heart : or 
sees his children placed in life as he would wish them : 
or hears good news of the absent son in New Zealand ? 
Yet to the man himself, these are not small matters. 
And so long as such matters are in every man's lot, 
every man will have "need of patience." 



304 



PATIENCE. 



TTe might go on to point out various other sources of 
that peculiar state of mind in which patience becomes 
needful : but we have already suggested to you enough to 
make you see that, looking no further than to the endur- 
ances and the waitings which concern this present world, 
we may well understand our text as spoken to every 
member of the human family. TVe might further show 
you how needful patience becomes when we are prose- 
cuting some long-continued labor, in which we stow 
weary and ready to give up : and how needful patience 
is in dealing with very many of our fellow-creatures, to 
bear with their slowness, their carelessness, their neglect 
of duty, their dulness of apprehension : how patience is 
needed in the transaction of worldly business, in every 
journey you take, in every place to which you go, TTe 
might show you how especially needful patience is to 
such as feel deeply anxious for the social and moral and 
spiritual elevation of mankind : for no one needs pa- 
tience more than the Christian philanthropist and the 
Christian minister. ^Ve do not care so much about that 
impatience which frets because it cannot have its own 
way : this is an age in which not even monarchs can 
have that in dealing with their fellow-creatures : but it 
is hard and it is disheartening to find that men will 
neither be led nor be driven in the right way : it is hard 
for the earnest preacher of the Cross to feel that Sun- 
day after Sunday he preaches the Gospel, yet sees no 



PATIENCE. 



305 



fruit : that dying men will not accept the offer of life, 
that sinners refuse to repent, and wanderers to return. 
It is hard for the philanthropist to expend his means 
and exhaust his energies to add to the comforts and the 
intelligence of his humbler brethren, and yet to find, 
what some of us may have been distressed by seeing, a 
decided preference for dirt and squalor, and ignorance, 
— and a suspicion that some evil political motive is 
urging on conduct which pure benevolence suggests. It 
needs patience in that man's heart, who is thoroughly 
persuaded that the day will come when the religion of 
Christ shall overspread the world, yet who feels year by 
year how little the frontiers of the Saviour's kingdom 
are advanced, — how slow its progress is, — how little 
return in converted souls is made by many regions of 
the world, for the brave and earnest hearts they have 
broken, and the devoted lives they have cut down. 
Ah, look at India, and think of men like Martyn ; and 
surely we have need of patience when we do ! But it 
wearies and disheartens us even to reckon up the host 
of things which make patience needful for us all : and 
perhaps it was hardly necessary to insist upon so plain 
a truth. So we pass to the more practical question : 
As we need patience so much, how are we to get it ? 
Where does it come from ? How is it to be had ? 

Now we reply to this at once, that patience is a 

T 



306 



PATIENCE. 



Christian grace, the gift of God, and the operation of 
the Holy Spirit : and it is to be obtained, as all Chris- 
tian graces are, by earnestly praying for it, and by 
patiently striving after it, and by humbly and rever- 
ently submitting to all those means which the Holy 
Spirit makes use of to implant it in our hearts. 
" Tribulation worketh patience," says the Apostle 
Paul : and how often we know it does : how often 
long-continued affliction is sanctified of God to tame 
and subdue the soul into a calm and beautiful submis- 
sion : but O, it was not tribulation alone that wrought 
this end, but tribulation sanctified, tribulation as an 
instrument in the hand of a higher Power. In many 
cases, long-continued suffering has wrought the very 
reverse of patience : it has wrought fretfulness, cease- 
less discontent, wrath against God. And so we say, 
that no merely natural means will work true patience : 
the reasonings of philosophy will not do it, the trainings 
of education will not do it, the mellowing of years will 
not do it. Indeed, apart from the influence of religion, 
we believe natural temper grows worse the older we 
grow. What so crabbed and unlovely as age often is ! 
Who so impatient as the ablest and best educated men 
often are ! We will grant you, indeed, that in working 
patience, the Holy Spirit finds very different kinds of 
material on which His gracious operations must be 
wrought. It is much easier in some cases than in 



PATIENCE: 



307 



others, to produce what looks like patience. There is 
not a respect in which natural disposition appears to 
vary so much. There is a constitutional impatience 
which is the natural result of the delicate nervous sys- 
tem and the quick active brain which always accompany 
high talent and high cultivation. Some people, again, 
seem naturally patient. They are not easily fluttered 
and excited. They are phlegmatic and comatose, — 
the result mainly of a dull brain and a slow circulation. 
Extremely stupid people often seem remarkably patient. 
But here, in truth, there is no true patience at all. 
There is nothing that deserves the name. For what 
is patience ? Is it not bearing, — bearing what is felt 
as painful and irritating, and bearing it calmly and well?. 
It is the man who feels keenly, and resists strong im- 
pulses to murmur, that is the truly patient man. You 
would not call a stone patient, let it bear what it might : 
and why ? Because it feels nothing. And the nearer 
people approach to the insensibility of the stone, — that 
is, the more they have of what we may call natural 
patience, — the less they have of real patience. The 
truth is, the more patient men seem the less patient 
they often really are. That quietude of manner which 
is the outward sign of patience in one who is striving 
against anger or fretfulness may be the outward sign of 
mere stolidity in another man. It is not patience to be 
composed under what another would feel keenly, if the 



308 



PATIENCE. 



reason of your composure is, that you do not feel it at 
all. It is not patience to await composedly the decision 
of some question which would make another tremble 
with eagerness, if the reason of your composure be, that 
you do not care how the matter goes. And so the 
heathen patience, — that patience, that fortitude, that 
stoical endurance, which resulted from caring for noth- 
ing, loving nothing, fearing nothing, — that was no 
patience at all ! It was not half so sublime, in its 
dull, dead impassiveness, as the trembling eagerness 
of St. Paul's stammering tongue, the keen feeling of 
St. Paul's trembling heart, fighting against the law in 
the members with a nature through which emotion 
thrilled like wind through a tree ! Ah, the true pa- 
tience, that patience which God's Spirit works, and 
oftentimes by the slow wear of suffering years, is not 
the dull torpor of a clod, but the sensitive, eager, ve- 
hement resistance of a human soul against that to resist 
which it is, by itself, utterly unequal. It was in Paul, 
with his hot, hasty temper, striving to keep it down : it 
was in Job, stripped of wealth and children, tortured in 
spirit and in body, yet fighting with the temptation to 
curse God and die : it was in David, as with a heart al- 
most crushed beneath the heavy visitation, he turned 
his pale face towards his chamber, and bemoaned his 
slain, rebellious, but still-loved son. It is not in the 
cold-blooded, heartless semi-brute, who takes quietly the 



PATIENCE. 



309 



death of wife and child, because so long as he is not 
touched himself, he really does not care : but it is in 
the heart-broken mourner, it may be, who tosses on his 
feverish bed through sleepless nights of tears. It is not 
in the spiritless dunce, who acquiesces in that obscurity 
which is all he is fit for, and does not care that men 
should remain ignorant of a name which they would 
never care to know : but it is in the inglorious Milton, 
living till age with the consciousness of a gift within 
him, which was able to leave something so written as 
that men would not willingly let it die ; or in the lofty 
genius bending his energies upon the duties of a lowly 
station, the passage to an unknown grave. 

But let us see to it, my friends, that none of us should 
fancy that because we find it hard to exercise patience, 
therefore we may be excused seeking to exercise it at 
all. Many people act as if they thought that because 
they have special need of patience, therefore they may 
do without patience altogether. Many a man appears 
to think that the hasty temper or the over-anxious dis- 
position which he received from nature, is to be received 
as an excuse for a constant fretfulness, or for occasional 
outbursts of impatience which are humiliating to Chris- 
tian character and destructive of Christian peace. But 
while we admit that no human being can tell how hon- 
estly any Christian man has striven with the evil heart 



310 



PATIENCE. 



of nature, — how hard the law of the mind has fought 
against the law in the members ; while we remember 
that we may partly know what a man has done, but can- 
not reckon what he has resisted : yet let us never forget 
that temptation is very rarely so strong as to destroy 
responsibility, or to excuse transgression. If any among 
us feels within himself, that impatience is his most easily 
besetting sin; — if any among us feels mournfully with- 
in himself that here it is the thorn in the flesh strikes 
deep, and the minister of Satan has most power to buf- 
fet ; then let such a one remember that here is his battle- 
ground ; — that here is the enemy which God specially 
intends him to resist, and here the end which God spe- 
cially intends him to win. " Better is he that rtileth his 
spirit," saith the wise man, u than he that taketh a city: " 
the truest and noblest conqueror is he who has come off 
victorious in that bloodless battle of life. And let us be 
sure of it, that " the God of patience and consolation," — 
He who " knoweth our frame," and who has told us how 
sorely we " have need of patience," — will be ready by 
His Spirit and His grace to " strengthen us to all pa- 
tience," — to enable us to K possess our souls in patience," 
— to "run with patience the race set before us," — "pa- 
tiently waiting for Christ" and His coming at the last. 
O, if the story be true, how one who stands out in the 
long ages past, as the purest and the best of heathens,* 

* Socrates. 



PATIENCE. 311 

bore still upon his passion-scarred face the traces of 
storms gone by, after the discipline of years had made 
him the mildest and calmest and most self-subdued : if 
the tale be true that when one who professed to read 
men's hearts upon their brow, said that the gentle phi- 
losopher must be the most irritable and impatient of men, 
that tranquil heathen, — heathen because in his dark- 
ened age he never had heard of Christ, — stayed the 
derisive laughter of the standers by at the physiogno- 
mist's mistake, and exclaimed "He is right, — I was 
naturally so, — but Philosophy has cured me" — O, if 
days of self-conflict and self-control could change the 
swarthy and puny being, with his satyr nature of old 
still written upon his satyr-face,* into the very best and 
gentlest : shall it ever be said, that the mighty grace of 
God, and the constant working of a Divine Spirit, will 
not suffice to calm and quiet the heats and storms and 
acerbities of nature, and to work out a better and loftier 
than the patience of the philosopher, — even the serene, 
equable, happy "patience of the saints!" May that 
patience be yours and mine ! Patience to submit to all 
the appointments of God, even to those which now ap- 

* What ! that low, swarthy, short-nosed, round-eyed satyr 
With the wide nostrils and Silenus' aspect, 
The splay feet and low stature ? 

And yet he was 
The earth's perfection of all mental beauty, 
And personification of all virtue. 



312 



PATIENCE. 



pear the darkest and the hardest to bear : patience to 
put down the evil suggestion to murmur: patience to 
wait on, day by day : patience to " wait," like Job, if 
need be, " all the days of our appointed time " ; till that 
happy " change shall come," when the believer shall 
" have need of patience " no more. 

" Wait on the Lord : be of good courage, and He 
shall strengthen thine heart : wait, I say, on the Lord." 
" Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." And 
so, the day will come at last, when this will be your 
thankful song as to the way by which God led you : — 

" I waited patiently for the Lord : and He inclined 
unto me and heard my cry, He brought me up also 
out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my 
feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He 
hath put a new song in my mouth; even praise unto our 
God ! " 



XVIII. 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING EETROSPECT AND 
PROSPECT. 

" For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure 
is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
have kept the faith : Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at 
that day ; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His 
appearing." — 2 Tim. iv. 6-8. 

NEED not tell any of you, in the hope of tell- 
ing you what you did not know before, that the 
books of the New Testament do not at all 
stand in the order in which they were written. The 
Book of Revelation, which stands last in the Bible, was 
written by St. John many years before he wrote his Gos- 
pel. And in like manner, though St. Paul's Epistles to 
Titus, Philemon, and the Hebrews, come in our Bibles 
after his second Epistle to Timothy, it is quite agreed 
by all those who have studied St. Paul's history and 
writings most carefully, that this second Epistle to Tim- 
othy is the very last that ever came from the aged Apos- 
tle's dictation. And so, this closing chapter of the sec- 
ond Epistle to Timothy, contains the latest inspired 
U 




314 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



words that were written or dictated by the great Apostle 
Paul. 

You would readily think so, apart from any precise 
information. The special solemnity of these words which 
form my text, is such as might well characterize some- 
thing said or written, under the inspiration of the Blessed 
Holy Spirit, by a Christian man to whom the last sol- 
emn realities were drawing very near. Sometimes, my 
friends, we have presentiments of things coming: pre- 
sentiments which are occasionally right and perhaps 
more frequently wrong : and the whole question of such 
fanciful yet impressive premonitions lies within a field 
of which we know little or nothing. But there is noth- 
ing fanciful in St. Paul's words here. They are not like 
the baseless conviction sometimes found in a person 
stricken with illness, that this illness will be the last : 
not like the groundless belief, that clings to some through 
many years of life, that they are to reach some partic- 
ular place in life before they die. Such convictions and 
beliefs, with no rational ground to rest on, do, we know, 
sometimes come most surprisingly true. But the great 
Apostle has risen to another region altogether. It is not 
the sunset of life, that gives him some mystical lore : it 
is something quite other, here, than the Celtic seer 
dreamt he traced on the mountain mist, or the Chaldaean 
shepherd in the stars. There is something here, that is 
quite different, even, from the hesitation as to the Fu- 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 315 



ture which St. Paul himself showed, when he wrote that 
he would do such a thing " as soon as I shall see how it 
will go with me." The Apostle writes here as one who 
has special and thorough information, about which there 
was no uncertainty at all. He writes by divine inspira- 
tion : quite firmly now, as one well informed : aware of 
the Present ; not afraid of the Past ; sure of the Future ! 

He has very nearly done his work : the resting-place 
is in view at length. The thorn in the flesh has not to be 
endured much longer : the weary feet will soon be still, 
the trembling hands at rest, the warm heart cold. It 
was a bloody death that was waiting, a little way onward ; 
for St. Paul is numbered not merely in the glorious com- 
pany of the Apostles, but also in the noble army of Mar- 
tyrs : but he passes quite over that, thinking of greater 
and worthier things. He does not think of the painful 
manner of his dying, but only of the triumphant fact of 
his death : he does not say how he was to depart, but 
only that he was going, and going soon. Let us recall 
the words again : they will bear many repetitions ; like 
music which is all the pleasanter that you have heard it 
many times before : " For I am now ready to be offered, 
and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought 
a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall 
give me at that day ! " 



316 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



My Christian friends, there are many things that were 
in St. Paul's life which will never be in ours. It was a 
wonderful life ; more wonderful than we are able to feel 
it, through our long familiarity with the story. His mys- 
terious rapture into Paradise, caught up where mortal 
has hardly ever been : his fierce persecution of the dis- 
ciples of our Saviour : his miraculous conversion and his 
sight of Christ in bodily form : his burning zeal and in- 
calculable usefulness : his supreme elevation of piety and 
spirituality : all these things are beyond us : there is a 
range of experience here that is high above what we 
know, or ever will know. But there can be no doubt 
whatsoever, — not the slightest, — that every one of us 
will some day stand where St. Paul stood when he wrote 
this text. There is no doubt at all, where the path of 
every one of us here present this afternoon, will end at 
last. There is just one end to all ways that human feet 
can tread. "The paths of glory," the poet tells us, 
" lead but to the grave " : but so do all other paths, just 
as well. O, brethren, that we could really feel what it 
is that is waiting for each one of us, a little farther on ! 
O that we could rightly consider our latter end, in our 
busy, careful days of health and life ! And surely it 
is of supreme interest, and the most practical inter- 
est, to see how St. Paul felt, standing where we shall 
stand, at the close of this life and the entrance upon the 
other ! 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 317 



And first, see how calm the Apostle is in the present. 
He does not say a word of death: he does not name 
that thing : he puts the case in quite a different way. 
" I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my de- 
parture is at hand." Yes: when that good man said 
that " our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished death " ; 
he meant it! And speaking of the great change, he 
does not use the bitter word: he changes it for mild 
words speaking merely of transition. This "being of- 
fered " : this " departure v : this is not the king of ter- 
rors, that had so long been the bugbear of our race! 
God had given him the victory over it, through Jesus 
Christ : the Apostle was not afraid. Thus calmly and 
simply does he speak of what is beyond question the 
saddest thing upon earth: a thing in itself so over- 
whelming, that in its presence we feel that all the words 
spoken and written about it, are utterly futile and inca- 
pable to express the tremendous Fact. There is just 
one way of regarding death, in which it ceases to be the 
most crushing, humbling, hopeless, despairing, of all 
things: and this is in the light of His blessed words 
who said ; " I am the Resurrection and the Life : He 
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall 
never die ! " 

Now, it cheers us, thinking of what lies before us, to 
see how St. Paul takes the last change, coming so very 



318 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



near. It is natural that it should be so. I have stood 
in a church in another country, where there is a marble 
tablet on the wall, showing the resting-place of a very 
sweet and pleasing poetess. Upon that marble tablet 
there are engraved a few lines, telling of the abundant 
hope and peace in which she died. The last lines are 
these : 

They who have seen thy look in death. 
Will never fear to die. 

And it is even so, seeing how St. Paul here looks and 
speaks : it is the same, seeing the peace and hope in 
which many Christians have departed. For here we 
get away from doctrine to fact : we pass from abstract 
statements, to examples of how the great system works 
in practice. 

Do we all desire that when we come to stand on the 
utmost verge of this life, with time behind us, and eter- 
nity before, we may have the same peace and holy calm 
as the great Apostle ? Then there is but the one way» 
"We must be daily living to our Redeemer now. We 
must be laying up our treasure in heaven : feeling, 
through all the cares and labors and interests of this 
world, that there is something above and beyond them 
all ; and that, though we can often hardly help being 
careful and troubled about many things, still that one 
thing is needful ! Burdened with our load of sins, in- 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



319 



creasing day by day ; — wearied with our evil hearts, so 
prone to that which is amiss, so backward from all good ; 
— O let us come anew every day to the fountain opened 
for sin and uncleanness, that our sins may be washed 
away in the atoning blood of the Lamb : and let us pray 
unceasingly, every day anew, that the Blessed Spirit 
may dwell within us; — sanctifying, enlightening, com- 
forting ; — making us fit first for God's service, and next 
for God s rest ! 

And now that we have remarked St. Paul's calmness 
in the present, let us think of his Retrospect: let us 
think of his view of the past. 

See what he says. "I have fought a good fight, I 
have finished my course, 1 have kept the faith. Look- 
ing back on his life, he feels that here is the sum of it. 

He begins by speaking in figures, as he was accus- 
tomed to do. And looking at the first, you will remem^ 
ber how, in a former Epistle to the same Timothy whom 
he is now addressing, he had said, t6 Fight the good fight 
of faith." What he enjoined upon another he did 
faithfully himself. For now, looking back over many 
years, speaking in the frank honesty of his heart, not 
boasting but testifying to another what his conscience 
testified to himself, he says, " I have fought a good 
fight ! " And doubtless he had done so. You could not 
even imagine St. Paul as doing or saying a dishonest 



320 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



thing : as taking credit which he knew he did not de- 
serve: as seeing a spiritual enemy, an enemy of his 
Saviour, or his own soul, or his Saviour's people ; and 
yet not fighting with it to the death. There was no 
truckling or trimming about St. Paul: and what was 
once said in this city over the grave of a good and brave 
man, was yet more true of the great Apostle ; — he 
" never feared the face of man," — no, nor of evil spirit. 
He had "fought a good fight": he had resisted and 
battled with sin, and temptation, in every form : with the 
world, in that sense in which the world is a dangerous 
thing ; with the great Adversary and his manifold emis- 
saries ; and, no doubt, with many evil tendencies and 
impulses in his own heart and nature. That eager, 
trembling frame, with the hot spirit burning it through ; 
O how it must have tempted to hasty speech, to unchari- 
table judgment, to impatience of those who could not 
sympathize with him, and who lagged behind when he 
was burning to make a wide world hear of Christ cruci- 
fied, of pardon and sanctification and resurrection ! 
Yes : we can easily see that St. Paul had just what we 
have, something within himself that needed to be re- 
sisted and put down by God's grace. And then, the 
opulent imagination is ready with a further similitude, 
typing the Christian life. " I have finished my course": 
he passes from the thought of the fight to the thought 
of the race. And you know already how closely these 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 321 

thoughts were connected in his mind. You know how 
the Apostle wrote, long before, " I therefore so run, not 
as uncertainly : so fight I, not as one that beateth the 
air : but I keep under my body, and bring it into sub- 
jection ; lest that by any means, when I have preached 
to others, I myself should be a castaway!" He had 
written these words in his first Epistle to the Corin- 
thians : he had years before him then : he knew the 
risks of this life, and he had not reached the sublime 
assurance of more advanced days : he knew how dili- 
gently we must use the means of grace, if we would not 
come short of the hope of glory. But 0, brethren, all 
that was over now. There was no fear at all, now, of 
being a castaway. The dangers of the way were past. 
The long race, with all its risks, was run. The path, 
the course, that once stretched away before him, now lay 
behind. And the Apostle seems to feel, looking back, 
that if he had not finished it as he wished, he had fin 
ished it as he was able. Next, laying figurative phrases 
aside, he speaks of something more that he had done. 
"I have kept the faith!" I have held my unshaken 
belief in that blessed faith, that holy religion, which 
once I destroyed : I have been faithful to my Master, to 
His cause and His commands : I have believed what He 
said to me, and done what He told me : I have never for 
a moment thought of ceasing to be His soldier and ser- 
vant: that seems to be the force of this closing state- 
H* u 



322 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



ment in St. Paul's retrospect. And how true the words 
are, — what sober unexaggerated fact they set forth, — 
who is there that does not know ? "What man is there 
that ever lived on this earth who did more truly and 
worthily " keep the faith ! " 

I know that a thought has already risen in your 
minds, a thought of something like doubt as to the 
fitness of all this. Who was it that once wrote, writing 
to this very same Timothy, such words as these : " This 
is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ; of 
whom I am chief " : who wrote these words, but the 
self-same Apostle Paul ? And who, but the same Saint 
and Martyr said, a little earlier in the epistle where I 
found my text, — " God hath saved us, and called us 
with an holy calling, not according to our works, but 
according to his purpose and grace in Christ Jesus be- 
fore the world began ; but is now made manifest by the 
appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ?" Indeed, it is 
needless to multiply passages in which St. Paul declares 
our utter unworthiness in God's sight, and our justifica- 
tion through God's free mercy in Christ, and through no 
merit of our own. Now, brethren, does it strike you 
that there is a little inconsistency between these lowly 
and penitent declarations ; and the seeming self-suffi- 
ciency of St. Paul's review of his own life in my text ? 
Is there not a little self-complacency : does not the 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 323 



Apostle, for once, think and speak too well of himself? 
You know, my friends, you and I might not like to 
speak so of ourselves, even if we thought so. 

Now, to remove this impression, let us just remember 
this : that St. Paul was writing to a friend who under- 
stood him ; and who would read each separate sentence 
of the Epistle in the light of all the rest. He knew that 
something might be taken for granted in writing to 
Timothy : that something might be taken for granted as 
to the way in which Christian men, to the end of time, 
would read these words. For we know how strongly 
St. Paul felt and taught, that everything he was, he was 
" by the grace of God " : that everything good that 
Christian people are, think, say, or do, is of God's grace, 
and through the working of the Blessed Spirit of God. 
All that was clearly understood : it had been said a 
hundred times : it was taken for granted. There was 
no need at all to say, " By the grace of God I have 
fought a good fight : by the grace of God I have fin- 
ished my course : by the grace of God I have kept the 
faith." Timothy would never dream of anything else ; 
nor would any reader who knows how perfectly explicit 
are St. Paul's views upon the great vital doctrines of 
our holy religion. It was no more needful to say more 
here, than it is needful for a minister to set forth the 
whole system of Christianity in every sermon he 
preaches : after all, we must assume some measure of 



324 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



intelligence and Christian enlightenment in those to 
whom we speak of sacred things. No, when St. Paul 
wrote the text, he had not forgot that he had called 
himself the "chief of sinners": nor that he had said 
" In me dwelleth no good thing " : nor that he had de- 
clared " By the grace of God I am what I am." And, 
rightly read, there is nothing in St. Paul's declaration in 
the review of his life, that is inconsistent with the sim- 
plest trust in Christ for salvation, or the most absolute 
sense of dependence on the Blessed Spirit that sanctifies. 
And let it be remembered, that it is not our duty, as 
Christians, to confess what we do not feel ; nor to say 
worse of ourselves than we really know to be true. 
And there is nothing more fatal to sincerity in our con- 
fessions, than to get into the way of uttering confessions 
which we suppose must be true, but do not really feel to 
be so. There is no harm at all in a Christian man 
who knows that in his vocation he has by God's help 
done his very best, — no harm in his thinking and say- 
ing so. It is mere hypocrisy to pretend anything else. 
No doubt, the very best Christians, knowing the imper- 
fection of their work and their hearts as others do not, 
will be the readiest to confess that they have nothing 
whatsoever of their own on which to rest for justifica- 
tion in the sight of God. The faithful minister who can 
say sincerely, looking back upon years of duty, — "I 
have done my very best for the spiritual welfare of the 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 325 



Flock : I have never designedly neglected anything I 
could do for it : I have spent heart and strength upon 
it " ; — such a one will be the first to take up the words 
of one of Christ's most devoted servants : " Nothing in 
my hand I bring ; Simply to Thy cross I cling." And 
yet, in reviewing his ministry in the last days of life, — 
yea, in the hour of his departing, — our Redeemer will 
not blame his servant, if, with the failing strength and 
the pausing heart, he still testify that he did his little 
best with the talent God gave him. For never was 
there clearer or stronger teacher of the great verity of 
Pardon and Salvation only through Christ, than that 
Saint, Apostle, and Martyr, who, in the retrospect of his 
life said, and said by Divine inspiration, — "I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith!" 

So much for the Retrospect. Next, let us think of 
the Prospect. 

We all know how natural it is for us to pass from look- 
ing back on the Past, to looking forward to the Future. 
You can hardly help thinking, when you recall the 
things you did and cared for five or ten years since, 
where and what you may be five or ten years after this. 
The Psalmist went from the Past to the Future in a sin- 
gle sentence which we all remember well : " The Lord 
hath been mindful of us : He will bless us." St. Paul 



326 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



makes the same swift transition. " I have fought a good 
fight,, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : 
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
at that day." 

He is standing on the very verge of this life. A few 
steps more of the path, and then he will bow his head, 
and pass within the veil. All this anxious, troublesome 
being, with its labors and weariness, its cares, fears, and 
temptations, will in a very little while be done with for- 
ever, — left all behind, to be seen never more : the soul 
was to pass away in its mysterious flight, — passing 
from human ken and comfort, as all departing souls do. 
O brethren, we see so far : but as to what is beyond, 
" we walk by faith and not by sight " ; — God increase 
our faith ! 

To the eye of mere sense, this departure, which St. 
Paul regarded as only the beginning of his better life, 
seems the close of the troubled, anxious chapter of our 
being ; and the blank end of all. You know how an- 
cient philosophy doubtfully spoke and dreamt of a life 
beyond the grave : how one of the wisest and most ami- 
able of heathen philosophers expressed his hope that 
man was immortal ; and then stopped himself and said, 
" Perhaps I am wrong in thinking all this : well, if I am 
wrong, I would rather be wrong than right "!* But 

* Si erro, libenter erro. 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



327 



how different with the great Apostle ! There is no 
doubt, no misgiving nor hesitation here. St. Paul felt 
just the same firm, simple confidence, about the Future 
as about the Past. Henceforth, he says, — as for the 
days and years to come, — there awaits me, — not the 
quiet grave ; not nothingness and forgetfulness ; not a 
leap in the dark into what no man knows : " Hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at 
that day ! " 

Henceforth : for all time coming : that ! We do not 
pretend to know the details of the bliss and holiness and 
rest of heaven. But we know this, that they are perfect : 
that in heaven, the soul, for the first time in all its life, 
is entirely content and happy. It is perfect peace, per- 
fect love and purity, there! These, henceforth: from 
the moment that this life is left behind. Some of you, 
as I say so, will think of the weary feeling expressed so 
touchingly by a great and peculiar genius who lately 
died : # how he said that quitting this life, he did not 
wish to waken up to immortality all at once ; that after 
the labor and worry and care of this world, he would 
like a total slumber of at least a thousand years. Many 
have known the feeling : but O, it is only a wayward 
fancy : it comes of carrying our earthly ideas to the 
kingdom that transcends them all. The weariness of 

* Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



328 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



heart and limb that grow here as years advance, is cast 
off finally in the dark river : and the soul enters on a 
rest and peace that will make it feel it never knew peace 
and rest before. O, it is not the thousand years of for- 
getfulness we need, to allay our weariness ; and gently 
to soothe the unquiet heart as to the dreamless rest of a 
child. It is the realized and never-ceasing Beatific Vis- 
ion of Christ, that will make us right forever ; and our 
Blessed Redeemer, who so well knows our frame, seems 
as though he had anticipated and prevented the worn- 
out heart's craving, when he said so kindly, " Come unto 
Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden ; and I will 
give you rest ! " 

Henceforth, the crown of righteousness: henceforth, 
rest ! May it be so with each of us, for our Saviour's 
sake. There will always be a Henceforth : from 
each minute there will Henceforth be something : 
always a Future ; a long Eternity, either of bliss or 
woe. 

And that for each one here. The Apostle, hitherto, 
has spoken only of himself ; because it was only of him- 
self he was called to speak for his present purpose. But 
as if he had felt there was something that some people 
might think egotism and selfishness in this, he goes on 
to add words of warning and comfort to you and me. 
Not for Apostles and Martyrs only is that crown pre- 
pared : not for them only who have fought a good fight, 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 329 



and finished their course, and kept the faith : but for 
poor sinful creatures like ourselves, who have to confess 
that in our warfare, iniquities prevail against us ; that 
in our race, we have not laid aside every weight nor the 
sin that doth so easily beset us ; that in our Christian life, 
we have not kept our faith as we ought, — but have been 
weak and wavering and unfaithful, — forgetting Him 
who found us when we were lost, and losing ourselves 
again in the waste wilderness. Yet if we do but love 
our Saviour's appearing, the great reward is ours. For 
our Blessed Master does not seek in us that which He 
will never find : and the Publican's cry of penitence is far 
liker us, than is St. Paul's firm summing up of the doings 
of a lifetime. Let us each anew send up that true uni- 
versal prayer, saying, U God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner 99 : and if we offer it heartily, then God will hear 
us and pardon us and bless us for our Blessed Sav- 
iour's sake. 

O that solemn Henceforth : solemn to each of us as 
we part to-day, thinking of no more than the chances 
and changes of this uncertain life : infinitely more sol- 
emn, as we each look forward to the hour which will 
certainly come to each, when the past will be done 
with, — our whole life here gone by forever ; — and 
only Eternity before us, — Henceforth glory, or hence- 
forth woe ! We shall never properly understand, till 
we each come to die, how thoroughly, then, the Past is 



330 



ST. PAUL'S CLOSING 



gone, and our only portion is in the Future. You may 
feel it in some measure, looking on the face of one de- 
parted : thinking how utterly the many cares that drew 
those lines on it are past and gone : — looking at the 
gray hair, and thinking that now your friend is no longer 
old. What a sharp, complete end of all the interests of 
this world, has come ! how free the heart is from all the 
little troubles and vexations that fevered it but a short 
while since ! Yes : gone, where these things are not ! 
Entered upon the great Henceforth ; the life beyond the 
grave ! The day will come to each of us when we can 
have nothing but what we can have there : when all the 
things we toil for and value here will avail us nothing : 
when the places and the people we knew, the books we 
used to read, the church where it was pleasant to wor- 
ship, the room in which we sat, will all be things long 
since past away ; — things that ceased to be for us years 
and years ago : — and nothing about us and before us 
but the great Eternity : Henceforth only that, and what 
we can have there ! And, blessed be God, there is that 
we can gain here, and take with us there ! No wonder 
that St. Paul declared that he counted all things but 
dross, that he might " win Christ." For the good part 
in our Saviour is not merely the best possession now : in 
a little while it will be the only one : the only possession 
that will not pass from our failing hand when we die ; 
the only possession we can take with us into the other 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



331 



world. Brethren, have we a true interest in Christ ? 
Let me say a hopeful word to such as earnestly desire 
it but are not yet assured of it, — a word not a whit 
more hopeful than is the tone of the whole New Testa- 
ment ; and not setting out any fancy of mine, but taken 
from the authoritative standards of the National Church : 
" One who doubteth of his being in Christ, may, notwith- 
standing, have a true interest in Christ, though he be 
not yet assured thereof : and in God's account he hath 
it, if he be duly affected with the apprehension of the 
want of it ; and unfeignedly desire to be found in Christ 
and to depart from iniquity.'' Is that our case, my 
friends ? Do we unfeignedly desire to be found in 
Christ ? Do we deeply feel our want of the good 
part in Him ? Then let us thank God for some 
reason for a good hope through grace! And though 
we, weak and sinful and unworthy, will never be able 
to look back with St. Paul's firm confidence on the 
past, we may yet humbly cherish St. Paul's comfortable 
assurance for the future. And so, Christian friends, 
when we are ready to be offered, and the time of our 
departure is at hand, though we may shrink from say- 
ing we have fought a good fight, we have finished our 
course, we have kept the faith ; feeling that it becomes 
us better to pass away from this world with lowly peni- 
tence in our pausing heart, and with the prayer for 
mercy through Christ on our lips as they are growing 



332 CLOSING RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



cold ; yet we may pass in the blessed hope, that Hence- 
forth heaven awaits us : that Henceforth there is laid up 
for us a crown of righteousness, which the Lord — less 
the righteous Judge than the merciful Redeemer — shall 
give us at That day! 

July 31, 1864. 




Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



m 23 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process- 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



